Can the cosmological constant undergo abrupt changes?

The existence of a simple spherically symmetric and static solution of the Einstein equations in the presence of a cosmological constant vanishing outside a definite value of the radial distance is investigated. A particular succession of field configurations, which are solutions of the Einstein equations in the presence of the considered cosmological term and auxiliary external sources, is constructed. Then, it is shown that the associated succession of external sources tend to zero in the sense of the generalized functions. The type of weak solution that is found becomes the deSitter homogeneous space-time for the interior region, and the Schwartzschild space in the outside zone.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Gauge invariance properties and singularity cancellations in a modified PQCD

The gauge-invariance properties and singularity elimination of the modified perturbation theory for QCD introduced in previous works, are investigated. The construction of the modified free propagators is generalized to include the dependence on the gauge parameter $\alpha$. Further, a functional proof of the independence of the theory under the changes of the quantum and classical gauges is given. The singularities appearing in the perturbative expansion are eliminated by properly combining dimensional regularization with the Nakanishi infrared regularization for the invariant functions in the operator quantization of the $\alpha$-dependent gauge theory. First-order evaluations of various quantities are presented, illustrating the gauge invariance-properties.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figure