Living with Lambda

Abstract

This talk presents a brief overview of recent results pertaining to the cosmological con- stant ‘ ’. I summarize the observational situation focussing on observations of high redshift Type Ia supernovae which suggest > 0. Observations of small angular anisotropies in the cosmic mi- crowave background complement Type Ia supernovae observations and both CMB and Sn can be combined to place strong constraints on the value of . The presence of a small -term increases the age of the universe and slows down the formation of large scale structure. I also review recent the- oretical attempts to generate a small -term at the current epoch and a model independent approach for determining the cosmic equation of state.