1998/03/05 by Damien J. Holden, David Wands · 56 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Differential Geometry Research #Astronomy #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Brans–Dicke theory #Classical mechanics #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark energy #Friedmann equations #Geometry #Gravitation #Mathematical physics #Phase (matter) #Physics #Plane (geometry) #Quantum mechanics #Theoretical physics #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0264-9381/15/10/027
published in Classical and Quantum Gravity 15(10), 3271-3290 (IOP Publishing) · 24 pages, including 9 figures, LaTeX
arxiv created 1998/03/05 · openalex publication_date 1998/10/01 · arxiv updated 2011/08/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present an autonomous phase-plane describing the evolution of Friedmann-Robertson-Walker models containing a perfect fluid (with barotropic index gamma) in Brans-Dicke gravity (with Brans-Dicke parameter omega). We find self-similar fixed points corresponding to Nariai's power-law solutions for spatially flat models and curvature-scaling solutions for curved models. At infinite values of the phase-plane variables we recover O'Hanlon and Tupper's vacuum solutions for spatially flat models and the Milne universe for negative spatial curvature. We find conditions for the existence and stability of these critical points and describe the qualitative evolution in all regions of the (omega,gamma) parameter space for 0<gamma<2 and omega>-3/2. We show that the condition for inflation in Brans-Dicke gravity is always stronger than the general relativistic condition, gamma<2/3.