1999/10/28 by T. Sakai, Sakai, T., A. Widom +3
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.gr-qc/9910102
5 Pages, ReVTeX, 1 figure
arxiv created 1999/10/28 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
The notion of inflation (past or present) in standard cosmological models is shown to be a consequence of a sufficiently high second law entropy production from the internal heating of the universal expansion. The longitudinal viscous internal heating of matter requires neither ``inflaton'' fields nor ``quintessence'' fields which in theory may induce a cosmological term into the Einstein equations. The purely thermodynamic principles required to understand inflation within the context of the standard general relativity equations will be discussed in detail.