Cosmological Constant, Quantum Measurement, and the Problem of Time

Abstract

Three of the big puzzles of theoretical physics are the following: (i) There is apparently no time evolution in the dynamics of quantum general relativity, because the allowed quantum states must obey the Hamiltonian constraint. (ii) During a quantum measurement, the state of the quantum system randomly collapses from being in a linear superposition of the eigenstates of the measured observable, to just one of the eigenstates, in apparent violation of the predictions of the deterministic, linear Schr\"{o}dinger equation. (iii) The observed value of the cosmological constant is exceedingly small, compared to its natural value, creating a serious fine-tuning problem. In this essay we propose a novel idea to show how the three problems help solve each other.