The Vacuum - A Cosmological Lightweight?

by Stefan Hofmann (LMU München)

Tuesday 26 May 2009, 17:15 → 18:15 Europe/Berlin

Max-Planck-Institut für Physik, Auditorium

Vacuum fluctuations contribute to the dominant contingent of the cosmic energy density inventory and thus influence the average expansion history of the Universe. In this connection, the vacuum poses serious challenges on ultraviolet and infrared scales. Particularly, measured infrared parameters of the standard model give rise to the infamous cosmological constant problem, the mother of all technical naturalness provocations. In this colloquium a new perspective on the technical naturalness facet of the vacuum will be presented, which is based on consistently breaking the relation between "the weight" of a source and its gravitational interaction.