1,722 research outputs found
Repulsive gravity in the very early Universe
I present two examples in which the curvature singularity of a
radiation-dominated Universe is regularized by (a) the repulsive effects of
spin interactions, and (b) the repulsive effects arising from a breaking of the
local gravitational gauge symmetry. In both cases the collapse of an initial,
asymptotically flat state is stopped, and the Universe bounces towards a state
of decelerated expansion. The emerging picture is typical of the pre-big bang
scenario, with the main difference that the string cosmology dilaton is
replaced by a classical radiation fluid, and the solutions are not
duality-invariant.Comment: 9 pages, LATEX, one figure included using epsf. Awarded the Fourth
Prize in the 1998 Awards for Essays on Gravitation (Gravity Research
Foundation, Wellesley Hills, Ma). To appear in Gen. Rel. Grav. An updated
collection of papers on the pre-big bang scenario is available at
http://www.to.infn.it/~gasperi
Quantum Squeezing and Cosmological Entropy Production
The entropy growth in a cosmological process of pair production is completely
determined by the associated squeezing parameter, and is insensitive to the
number of particles in the initial state. The total produced entropy may
represent a significant fraction of the entropy stored today in the cosmic
black-body radiation, provided pair production originates from a change in the
background metric at a curvature scale of the Planck order.Comment: 7 pages, plain TEX, to appear in Class.Quantum Grav., CERN-TH.6954/9
Observable (?) cosmological signatures of superstrings in pre-big bang models of inflation
The different couplings of the dilaton to the U(1) gauge field of heterotic
and Type I superstrings may leave an imprint on the relics of the very early
cosmological evolution. Working in the context of the pre-big bang scenario, we
discuss the possibility of discriminating between the two models through
cross-correlated observations of cosmic magnetic fields and primordial
gravitational-wave backgrounds.Comment: 12 pages, latex, 1 figure included using epsfig; added more details
on the low energy dynamics of the internal moduli fields, results and
conclusions are unchanged; typos corrected and small changes performed to
match the final published version, to appear in Phys. Lett.
Inflation and initial conditions in the pre-big bang scenario
The pre-big bang scenario describes the evolution of the Universe from an
initial state approaching the flat, cold, empty, string perturbative vacuum.
The choice of such an initial state is suggested by the present state of our
Universe if we accept that the cosmological evolution is (at least partially)
duality-symmetric. Recently, the initial conditions of the pre-big bang
scenario have been criticized as they introduce large dimensionless parameters
allowing the Universe to be "exponentially large from the very beginning". We
agree that a set of initial parameters (such as the initial homogeneity scale,
the initial entropy) larger than those determined by the initial horizon scale,
H^{-1}, would be somewhat unnatural to start with. However, in the pre-big bang
scenario, the initial parameters are all bounded by the size of the initial
horizon. The basic question thus becomes: is a maximal homogeneity scale of
order H^{-1} necessarily unnatural if the initial curvature is small and,
consequently, H^{-1} is very large in Planck (or string) units? In the
impossibility of experimental information one could exclude "a priori", for
large horizons, the maximal homogeneity scale H^{-1} as a natural initial
condition. In the pre-big bang scenario, however, pre-Planckian initial
conditions are not necessarily washed out by inflation and are accessible (in
principle) to observational tests, so that their naturalness could be also
analyzed with a Bayesan approach, in terms of "a posteriori" probabilities.Comment: 4 pages, Latex, one figure. Many references added. The text has been
improved in many points. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Towards a future singularity?
We discuss whether the future extrapolation of the present cosmological state
may lead to a singularity even in case of "conventional" (negative) pressure of
the dark energy field, namely . The discussion is based on an
often neglected aspect of scalar-tensor models of gravity: the fact that
different test particles may follow the geodesics of different metric frames,
and the need for a frame-independent regularization of curvature singularities.Comment: 8 pages. Essay written for the "2004 Awards for Essays on
Gravitation" (Gravity Research Foundation, Wellesley Hills, MA, USA), and
selected for "Honorable Mention
String cosmology versus standard and inflationary cosmology
This paper presents a review of the basic, model-independent differences
between the pre-big bang scenario, arising naturally in a string cosmology
context, and the standard inflationary scenario. We use an unconventional
approach in which the introduction of technical details is avoided as much as
possible, trying to focus the reader's attention on the main conceptual aspects
of both scenarios. The aim of the paper is not to conclude in favour either of
one or of the other scenario, but to raise questions that are left to the
reader's meditation. Warnings: the paper does not contain equations, and is not
intended as a complete review of all aspects of string cosmology.Comment: 22 pages, Latex (IOP Style), three figures included using epsfig. To
appear in Class. Quantum Grav. (Topical Review Section). Two misprints
correcte
Seeds of large-scale anisotropy in string cosmology
Pre-big bang cosmology predicts tiny first-order dilaton and metric
perturbations at very large scales. Here we discuss the possibility that other
-- more copiously generated -- perturbations may act, at second order, as
scalar seeds of large-scale structure and CMB anisotropies. We study, in
particular, the cases of electromagnetic and axionic seeds. We compute the
stochastic fluctuations of their energy-momentum tensor and determine the
resulting contributions to the multipole expansion of the temperature
anisotropy. In the axion case it is possible to obtain a flat or slightly
tilted blue spectrum that fits present data consistently, both for massless and
for massive (but very light) axions.Comment: 27 pages, LATEX, one figure included using eps
Superhorizon curvaton amplitude in inflation and pre-big bang cosmology
We follow the evolution of the curvaton on superhorizon scales and check that
the spectral tilt of the curvaton perturbations is unchanged as the curvaton
becomes non-relativistic. Both inflation and pre-big bang cosmology can be
treated since the curvaton mechanism within the two scenarios works the same
way. We also discuss the amplitude of the density perturbations, which leads to
some interesting constrains on the pre-big bang scenario. It is shown that
within a SL(3,R) non-linear sigma model one of the three axions has the right
coupling to the dilaton and moduli to yield a flat spectrum with a high string
scale, if a quadratic non-perturbative potential is generated and an
intermediate string phase lasts long enough.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX. Discussion and references adde
A covariant and gauge invariant formulation of the cosmological "backreaction"
Using our recent proposal for defining gauge invariant averages we give a
general-covariant formulation of the so-called cosmological "backreaction". Our
effective covariant equations allow us to describe in explicitly gauge
invariant form the way classical or quantum inhomogeneities affect the average
evolution of our Universe.Comment: 12 pages, no figures. Typos corrected, matches version to appear in
JCA
Friedmann Universes and Exact Solutions in String Cosmology
We show that the classical null strings generate the Hilbert-Einstein gravity
corresponding to D-dimensional Friedmann universes.Comment: 8 pages, LATE
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