München 2009 – scientific programme

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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 16: Kosmologie I

GR 16.3: Talk

Friday, March 13, 2009, 09:50–10:10, A214

Cosmological constant from decoherence — •Friedemann Queisser — Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, Zülpicher Straße 77, D-50937 Köln

Yokoyama proposed the interesting idea to explain the small nonvanishing cosmological constant from the fact that the universe might not be in its ground state but rather in a false vacuum with nonvansishing vacuum energy. This idea is also motivated by recent ideas in string theory were a large 'landscape' of local minima is discussed. Based on this idea we investigated the influence of decoherence on this quantum tunneling process to explain the localization and the classical appeareance of the cosmological constant. Furthermore we also investigated the suppression of the tunneling rate due to system-environment-interaction.