2.3.1. The Einstein Equation for Weyl’s Geometry
The conformal transformation (
) of the metric tensor
within the more general Weyl’s
framework into Einstein’s
framework, where the metric tensor is
, induces a simple relation between the Ricci tensor and scalar within Weyl’s Integrable Geometry and the Einstein GR
framework. Our convention is using the symbol prime (′) on mathematical objects to denote Einstein GR
framework objects:
By using these expressions, we can extent the standard EGR equation into:
Here is in WIG and is expected that , with beeing the Einstein cosmological constant in EGR. This relationship guarantees the explicit scale invariance of the equations. This makes explicit the appearance of as invariant scalar (in-scalar), since then: . That is, the co-scaler power of in WIG is .
The above equations are a generalization of the original Einstein equation. Thus, they have an even larger class of local gauge symmetries that need to be fixed by a gauge choice. In Dirac’s work, the gauge choice was based on the large numbers hypothesis. Here, we discuss a different gauge choice.
The corresponding scale-invariant FLRW cosmology equations were first introduced in 1977 by Canuto et al. [
18]:
These equations reproduce the standard FLRW equations in the limit
. The scaling of
was recently exploited to revisit the cosmological constant problem within quantum cosmology [
26]; resulting in the conclusion that our Universe is unusually large, given that the expected mean size of all universes, where EGR holds, is expected to be of a Planck scale. In that study,
was a key assumption as the various universes were expected to obey the EGR equations.
What would be the expected mean size of a universe, if the condition is relaxed, remains an open question for an ensemble of WIG-universes.
2.3.2. The Scale Invariant Vacuum Gauge at and
The idea of the Scale Invariant Vacuum was introduced first in 2017 by Maeder [
9]. For an empty universe model, the de Sitter metric is conformal to the Minkowski metric, thus,
is vanishing Maeder [
9]. Therefore, for conformally flat metric, that is, Ricci flat (
) Einstein vacuum (
), the following vacuum equation can be obtained using (8):
For homogeneous and isotropic space (
), only
and its time derivative
can be non-zero. As a corollary of (
11), one can derive the following set of equations [
9]:
These equations can be derived by using the time and space components of the equations, or by looking at the relevant trace invariant along with the relationship
. Any one pair among these equations is sufficient to prove the validity of the other pair of equations.
Theorem 1.
Using the SIV Equations (12) or (13) with one has:
Corollary 1.
The solution of the SIV gauge equations is then:
with where c is the speed of light usually set to 1.
The choice of such gauge for
can be used to replace the Dirac’s large numbers hypothesis invoked by Canuto et al. [
18]. This is what we refer to as a Scale Invariant Vacuum (SIV) gauge for
.
Even more, now we can have an alternative viewpoint on (8) and (
11). Since (8) is scale invariant then one does not have to consider zero case for
and
in general, but if the scale factor
satisfies (
11), then all the
terms and the
term in (8) will cancel out leaving us with the standard Einstein GR equation with zero cosmological constant.
Thus, a proper choice of λ gauge satisfying (11) results in the standard Einstein equation with no cosmological constant! This is easily seen in the case of homogeneous and isotropic universe or when requiring only reparametrization invariance, then both cases are resulting in (
12) and (13) along with (
14).
If one takes the reparametrization symmetry viewpoint then the presence of a non-zero cosmological constant is indication of un-proper time parametrization that can be cured upon suitable new time gauge deduced by the appropriate choice of λ.
Upon the use of the SIV gauge, first in 2017 by Maeder [
9], one observes that
the cosmological constant disappears from Equations (
9) and (10):
The solutions of these equations have been discussed in details in Maeder [
9], together with various cosmological properties concerning the Hubble-Lemaître and deceleration parameters, the cosmological distances and different cosmological tests. The redshift drifts appear as one of the most promising cosmological tests [
10]. Here, we limit the discussion to a few points pertinent to the subject of the paper. Analytical solutions for the flat SIV models with
have been found for the matter [
27] and radiation [
28] dominated models. In the former case, we have a simple expression:
It is expressed in the SIV-timescale
t where at present
and
. Such solutions are illustrated in
Figure 1. They are lying relatively close to the
CDM ones, the differences being larger for lower
.
This is a general property:
the effects of scale invariance are always larger for the lower matter densities, being the largest ones for the empty space. As usual, here
with
. Remarkably, Eqs. (
16) and (17) allow flatness for different values of
. It follows from (
18) that the initial time at
is related to the value of
:
The Hubble parameter and
are then, in the timescale
t (which goes from
at the Big-Bang to
at present):
From Eqs. (
18) and (
20), we see that there is no meaningful scale invariant solution for an expanding Universe (
) with
equal or larger than 1. Thus, the model solutions are quite consistent with the causality relations discussed by Maeder and Gueorguiev [
2].
The usual timescale
in years or seconds is
Gyr at present [
29] and
at the Big-Bang. One can change from the SIV-time
t to the usual time scale
by using the relationship ansatz [
7]:
which is expressing that the age fraction with respect to the present age is the same in both timescales. This ansatz gives:
The relevant derivatives are constants depending on
and
only:
For larger
, timescale
t is squeezed over a smaller fraction of the interval 0 to 1, (which reduces the range of
over the ages). Using the above expressions one can write the Hubble parameter in the usual time scale
via its expression in the
t-scale:
This finally gives for the Hubble constant:
The last factor could be recognized as
. To see this one can utilize the equations (
22) and (
23) to switch from the SIV-time
t to the conventional time
scale [
7] in order to obtain: