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Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The Cosmological Constant Problem (But Were Afraid To Ask)

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abstract

This article aims at discussing the cosmological constant problem at a pedagogical but fully technical level. We review how the vacuum energy can be regularized in flat and curved space-time and how it can be understood in terms of Feynman bubble diagrams. In particular, we show that the properly renormalized value of the zero-point energy density today (for a free theory) is in fact far from being 122 orders of magnitude larger than the critical energy density, as often quoted in the literature. We mainly consider the case of scalar fields but also treat the cases of fermions and gauge bosons which allows us to discuss the question of vacuum energy in super-symmetry. Then, we discuss how the cosmological constant can be measured in cosmology and constrained with experiments such as measurements of planet orbits in our solar system or atomic spectra. We also review why the Lamb shift and the Casimir effect seem to indicate that the quantum zero-point fluctuations are not an artifact of the quantum field theory formalism. We investigate how experiments on the universality of free fall can constrain the gravitational properties of vacuum energy and we discuss the status of the weak equivalence principle in quantum mechanics, in particular the Collela, Overhausser and Werner experiment and the quantum Galileo experiment performed with a Salecker-Wigner-Peres clock. Finally, we briefly conclude with a discussion on the solutions to the cosmological constant problem that have been proposed so far.

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representative citing papers

The unavoidable de Sitter fate of a scale-invariant Universe

gr-qc · 2026-06-30 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0

Stable flat solutions in scale-invariant scalar-tensor theories carry a non-vanishing cosmological constant unless the quartic coupling vanishes, and this vanishing is not radiatively protected, making a residual CC generic.

A solid unification of the dark sector

astro-ph.CO · 2026-06-25 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0

A generalized Chaplygin-type solid unifies dark matter and dark energy via an early pressureless phase transitioning to a late solid phase that supports acceleration and produces distinct low-redshift perturbation signatures.

A Lapse in the Cosmological Constant Problem

hep-th · 2026-04-09 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0

A lapse function in a 5D anisotropic gravity theory generates a global constraint that cancels Standard Model vacuum energy radiative corrections at all orders in the 4D effective theory.

Reconstructing dark energy with fewer assumptions

astro-ph.CO · 2026-06-04 · unverdicted · novelty 5.0

Bin-wise uncorrelated reconstruction from DESI/SDSS BAO and Pantheon+/Union3.1/DES-Dovekie supernovae yields dark energy density peaking then declining and equation of state oscillating with phantom crossing near z~0.7, consistent across datasets at moderate significance.

Generalizing the CPL Parametrization through Dark Sector Interaction

astro-ph.CO · 2026-04-28 · unverdicted · novelty 5.0 · 2 refs

Generalized interacting dark energy models with constant or dynamical couplings yield analytical density expressions but are not preferred over LambdaCDM by Bayesian evidence from DESI, Pantheon+, and CMB data.

Dark energy from string theory: an introductory review

hep-th · 2026-03-26 · unverdicted · novelty 2.0

String theory imposes constraints on dark energy but permits various construction attempts for de Sitter vacua and single-field exponential quintessence models despite obstructions.

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