MG12 - Talk detail |
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Participant |
Queisser, Friedemann | |
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Institution |
Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne - Zülpicher Straße 77 - Cologne - NRW - Germany | |
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Session |
Talk |
Abstract |
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COM2 |
Cosmological Constant from decoherence? |
Yokoyama proposed the 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 nonvanishing vacuum energy. This proposal is also motivated by recent ideas in string theory where a large 'landscape' of local minima is discussed. Based on this idea we investigate the influence of decoherence on a quantum tunnelling process between minima in order to explain the classical appearance of the cosmological constant. We discuss, moreover, the modification of the tunnelling rate due to a system-environment-interaction. |