Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking, Non-minimal Coupling, and Cosmological Constant Problem

Treating the gravitational field as a dynamical field, we study the spontaneous symmetry breaking induced by a scalar field under its self-interaction and non-minimal interaction with gravity in four dimensional space-time. In particular, we explore the feasibility of inducing spontaneous symmetry breaking after introducing the non-minimal coupling, and discuss briefly the cosmological constant problem corresponding to the phase transition associated with the spontaneous symmetry breaking.