Torsion,wormholes, and the problem of the Cosmological constant

We consider the effect of torsion in the early universe to see if it is possible to explain the small value (if not zero) of the Cosmological constant at the present time. For the gauge-theoretic formulation of the Einstein-Cartan theory, we find a wormhole instanton solution which has a minimum (baby universe) radius of the Planck length. The basic difficulty with the wormhole approach is stressed. Finally, we give an explicit calculation from the expression for the evolution of the scale factor, which shows that the spin-dominated interaction term in the very early universe can cancel the Cosmological constant term at that epoch.