2000/05/31 by Kelly Kirklin, Kelley H. Kirklin, Neil Turok +1 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.63.083509
published as Phys.Rev. D63 (2001) 083509 · 23 pages, compressed and RevTex file, including nine postscript figure files. Submitted version
arxiv created 2000/07/14 · openalex publication_date 2001/03/22 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The singularity present in cosmological instantons of the Hawking-Turok type is resolved by a conformal transformation, where the conformal factor has a linear zero of codimension 1. We show that if the underlying regular manifold is taken to have the topology of RP4 and the conformal factor is taken to be a twisted field so that the zero is enforced, then one obtains a one-parameter family of solutions of the classical field equations, where the minimal action solution has the conformal zero located on a minimal volume noncontractible RP3 submanifold. For instantons with two singularities, the corresponding topology is that of a cylinder S3\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi[0,1] with D=4 analogues of ``cross-caps'' at each of the end points.