2008/06/30 by Jean-Luc Lehners · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2008.06.001
published as Phys.Rept.465:223-263,2008 · 79 pages, 12 figures, invited review to be published in Phys. Rept. Non-gaussianity section updated and generalized
arxiv created 2009/06/02 · arxiv updated 2011/03/10
Ekpyrotic and cyclic cosmologies provide theories of the very early and of the very late universe. In these models, the big bang is described as a collision of branes - and thus the big bang is not the beginning of time. Before the big bang, there is an ekpyrotic phase with equation of state w=P/rho >> 1 (where P is the average pressure and rho the average energy density) during which the universe slowly contracts. This phase resolves the standard cosmological puzzles and generates a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of cosmological perturbations containing a significant non-gaussian component. At the same time it produces small-amplitude gravitational waves with a blue spectrum. The dark energy dominating the present-day cosmological evolution is reinterpreted as a small attractive force between our brane and a parallel one. This force eventually induces a new ekpyrotic phase and a new brane collision, leading to the idea of a cyclic universe. This review discusses the detailed properties of these models, their embedding in M-theory and their viability, with an emphasis on open issues and observational signatures.