Vacuum energy sequestering and cosmic dynamics

Abstract

We explicitly compute the dynamics of closed homogeneous and isotropic universes permeated by a single perfect fluid with a constant equation of state parameter $w$ in the context of a recent reformulation of general relativity, proposed in [1], which prevents the vacuum energy from acting as a gravitational source. This is done using an iterative algorithm, taking as an initial guess the background cosmological evolution obtained using standard general relativity in the absence of a cosmological constant. We show that, in general, the impact of the vacuum energy sequestering mechanism on the dynamics of the universe is significant, except for the $w=1/3$ case where the results are identical to those obtained in the context of general relativity with a null cosmological constant. We also show that there are well behaved models in general relativity that do not have a well behaved counterpart in the vacuum energy sequestering paradigm studied in this paper, highlighting the specific case of a quintessence scalar field with a linear potential.