PIRSA:09050076

Positive and Negative Energy Symmetry and the Cosmological Constant Problem

Moffat, J. (2009). Positive and Negative Energy Symmetry and the Cosmological Constant Problem. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/09050076

Moffat, John. Positive and Negative Energy Symmetry and the Cosmological Constant Problem. Perimeter Institute, May. 25, 2009, https://pirsa.org/09050076 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:09050076,
            doi = {10.48660/09050076},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/09050076},
            author = {Moffat, John},
            keywords = {Quantum Gravity, Quantum Fields and Strings, Particle Physics, Cosmology},
            language = {en},
            title = {Positive and Negative Energy Symmetry and the Cosmological Constant Problem},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2009},
            month = {may},
            note = {PIRSA:09050076 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

John Moffat

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

Talk number
PIRSA:09050076
Collection
Talk Type
Subject
Abstract
The Hamiltonian for the quantized gravitational and matter fields contains both positive and negative energy particle contributions, which leads through a positive and negative energy symmetry of the vacuum to a cancellation of the zero-point vacuum energy and a vanishing cosmological constant in the presence of a gravitational field. The positive and negative energy particles interact only weakly through gravity. As in the case of antimatter, the negative energy matter is not found naturally on Earth or in galaxies in the universe. We introduce a graviton momentum cutoff ΛG ≤ 2 x10-3 eV that leads to a gravitational stability of the Minkowski spacetime vacuum with a lifetime greater than the age of the universe. A positive energy spectrum and a consistent unitary field theory for a pseudo- Hermitian Hamiltonian is obtained by demanding that the pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonian is PT symmetric. The quadratic divergences in the two-point vacuum fluctuations and the self- energy of a scalar field are removed. By adopting a Higgsless model of electroweak theory, we remove the fine-tuning associated with a spontaneous symmetry breaking vacuum density. We also postulate that there are no phase transitions associated with QCD and at higher particle physics energy scales, removing all theorized quark-gluon vacuum density condensates and their fine-tuned vacuum densities and cosmological constant contributions.