Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and the Cosmological Constant
An approach that allows studying the relationship between the neutralization of the cosmological constant and instantons for cosmology coupled to antisymmetric fields is proposed. Using suitable variables, the Lagrangian leading to the FRW equations can be written analogously to a Ginzburg-Landau theory and we show how spontaneous symmetry breaking appears. The approach leads to three possible solutions, if we denote $Λ_1$ and $Λ_2$ as the cosmological constants that come from gravity ($Λ_1$) and antisymmetric fields ($Λ_2$), then the solutions, a) $ |Λ_2|>|Λ_1|$ is consistent with a very small but non-zero $Λ_1$, b) $|Λ_2|<|Λ_1|$, then $Λ_1$ is observationally ruled out and, c) $|Λ_2|=|Λ_1|$ is a solution with finite action and instantons restoring the symmetry $φ\to -φ$. The third solution is also consistent with neutralization of the cosmological constant in four dimensions.