München 2019 – scientific programme

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 6: Philosophy of Cosmology VI

AGPhil 6.2: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 20, 2019, 13:00–13:45, HS 10

The cosmological constant as a quantum gravity effect. — •Fay Dowker — Imperial College, London, UK

By treating the whole universe as a quantum system, and using features of the causal set approach to quantum gravity, Sorkin predicted the magnitude of the cosmological ``constant'', Lambda, today should be of the order of the ambient matter density today. This prediction was verified in the late 1990s and is the only prediction from quantum gravity that has been verified. I will review Sorkin's argument which uses the path integral or sum-over-histories approach as the fundamental framework for quantum theory. I will review the state of play on models based on Sorkin's original heuristic argument and their phenomenology, for example fits to the CMB and other data sets.