THE COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT PROBLEM

The cosmological constant is a macroscopic parameter which controls the large-scale structure of the Universe. All observations to date have shown that it is very small. However, our modern microscopic theory of particle physics and gravity suggests that the cosmological constant should be very large. This discrepancy between theoretical expectation and empirical observation constitutes the cosmological constant problem. After a review of the problem, some approaches to its solution are briefly discussed, and then a possible solution is proposed. In this approach, the cosmological constant appears as a constant of integration, unrelated to any parameters in the Lagrangian. The solution makes crucial use of quantum mechanics.