Using a non-minimal coupling between matter and curvature to sequester the Cosmological Constant

Abstract

We present a novel mechanism for generating a Cosmological Constant and suitably sequestering the vacuum contribution to it, so that the eponymous Cosmological Constant problem is avoided. We do so by resorting to a model endowed with a non-minimal coupling between curvature and matter in an appropriately defined relaxed regime, and show that this shares features with both Unimodular gravity as well as a recent proposal to sequester the vacuum contribution through the use of an external term to the action functional.