Crunching Away the Cosmological Constant Problem: Dynamical Selection of a Small $\Lambda$

Understand

We propose a novel explanation for the smallness of the observed cosmological constant (CC).

• Regions of space with a large CC are short lived and are dynamically driven to crunch soon after the end of inflation.
• Conversely, regions with a small CC are metastable and long lived and are the only ones to survive until late times.
• While the mechanism assumes many domains with different CC values, it does not result in eternal inflation nor does it require a long period of inflation to populate them.