Dark Energy from the Gas of Wormholes

Abstract

We assume the space-time foam picture in which the vacuum is filled with a gas of virtual wormholes. It is shown that virtual wormholes form a finite (of the Planckian order) value of the energy density of zero-point fluctuations. However such a huge value is compensated by the contribution of virtual wormholes to the mean curvature and the observed value of the cosmological constant is close to zero. A nonvanishing value appears due to the polarization of vacuum in external classical fields. In the early Universe some virtual wormholes may form actual ones. We show that in the case of actual wormholes vacuum polarization effects are negligible while their contribution to the mean curvature is apt to form the observed dark energy phenomenon. Using the contribution of wormholes to dark matter and dark energy we find estimates for characteristic parameters of the gas of wormholes.