Higher spin fields and the problem of the cosmological constant

The cosmological evolution of free massless vector or tensor (but not gauge) fields minimally coupled to gravity is analyzed. It is shown that there are some unstable solutions for these fields in the de Sitter background. The back reaction of the energy-momentum tensor of such solutions to the original cosmological constant exactly cancels the latter and the expansion regime changes from the exponential to the power-law one. In contrast with the adjustment mechanism realized by a scalar field the gravitational coupling constant in this model is time independent and the resulting cosmology may resemble the realistic one.