2011/06/30 by Costas Kounnas, Hervé Partouche, Herve Partouche +1 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Brane cosmology #Classical mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Mathematical physics #Physics #Superstring theory #Supersymmetry #Theoretical physics #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.nuclphysb.2011.10.010
39+1 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2011/10/18 · openalex publication_date 2011/10/24 · arxiv updated 2015/05/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We are presenting the basic ingredients of a stringy mechanism able to resolve both the Hagedorn instabilities of finite temperature superstrings as well as the initial singularity of the induced cosmology in arbitrary dimensions. These are shown to be generic in a large class of (4,0) type II superstring vacua, where non-trivial "gravito-magnetic" fluxes lift the Hagedorn instabilities of the thermal ensemble and the temperature duality symmetry is restored. This symmetry implies a universal maximal critical temperature. In all such models there are three characteristic regimes, each with a distinct effective field theory description: Two dual asymptotically cold regimes associated with the light thermal momentum and light thermal winding states, and the intermediate regime where additional massless thermal states appear. The partition function exhibits a conical structure as a function of the thermal modulus, irrespective of the space-time dimension. Thanks to asymptotic right-moving supersymmetry, the genus-1 partition function is well-approximated by that of massless thermal radiation in all of the three effective field theory regimes. The resulting time-evolution describes a bouncing cosmology connecting, via spacelike branes, a contracting thermal "winding" Universe to an expanding thermal "momentum" Universe, free of any essential curvature singularities. The string coupling remains perturbative throughout the cosmological evolution. Bouncing cosmologies are presented for both zero and negative spatial curvature.