Vacuum Energy, Black Holes and the Cosmological Constant

Abstract

We consider a possibility that the formally infinite vacuum energy of the quantized matter fields could be stored into Planck-size quantum black holes acting as the fundamental constituents of space and time. Using the recently proposed thermodynamical equation of state obeyed by the cosmological constant we indicate, how this idea might explain the smallness of the cosmological constant, if the vacuum energy is the source of the cosmological constant.