Gauge-Dependent Cosmological "Constant"

Abstract

When the cosmological constant of spacetime is derived from the 5D induced-matter theory of gravity, we show that a simple gauge transformation changes it to a variable measure of the vacuum which is infinite at the big bang and decays to an astrophysically-acceptable value at late epochs. We outline implications of this for cosmology and galaxy formation.Comment: 14 pages, no figures, expanded version to be published in Class. Quantum Gra