Zero cosmological constant and nonzero dark energy from the holographic principle

The first law of thermodynamics and the holographic principle applied to an arbitrary large cosmic causal horizon are shown to naturally demand a zero cosmological constant and a non-zero dynamical dark energy in the form of the holographic dark energy. A semiclassical analysis shows that the holographic dark energy has a parameter d = 1 and an equation of state comparable to current observational data if the entropy of the horizon saturates the Bekenstein-Hawking bound. This result indicates that quantum field theory should be modified on a large scale to explain the dark energy. The relations among the dark energy, the quantum vacuum energy and the entropic gravity are also discussed.