A New Perspective on Cosmic Coincidence Problems

Abstract

Cosmological data suggest that we live in an interesting period in the history of the universe when ρ_Λ\sim ρ_M \sim ρ_R. The occurence of any epoch with such a "triple coincidence" is puzzling, while the question of why we happen to live during this special epoch is the "Why now?" problem. We introduce a framework which makes the triple coincidence inevitable; furthermore, the ``Why now?'' problem is transformed and greatly ameliorated. The framework assumes that the only relevant mass scales are the electroweak scale, M_{EW}, and the Planck scale, M_{Pl}, and requires ρ_Λ^{1/4} \sim M_{EW}^2/M_{Pl} parametrically. Assuming that the true vacuum energy vanishes, we present a simple model where a false vacuum energy yields a cosmological constant of this form.

5 pages, 1 figure, uses psfig. Refs added, slightly enhanced