The Ekpyrotic universe: Colliding branes and the origin of the hot big bang

By J. Khoury, B. Ovrut, Paul J. Steinhardt, N. Turok. 2001

1,339 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We propose a cosmological scenario in which the hot big bang universe is produced by the collision of a brane in the bulk space with a bounding orbifold plane, beginning from an otherwise cold, vacuous, static universe. The model addresses the cosmological horizon, flatness and monopole problems and generates a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of density perturbations without invoking superluminal expansion (inflation). The scenario relies, instead, on physical phenomena that arise naturally in theories based on extra dimensions and branes. As an example, we present our scenario predominantly within the context of heterotic M theory. A prediction that distinguishes this scenario from standard inflationary cosmology is a strongly blue gravitational wave spectrum, which has consequences for microwave background polarization experiments and gravitational wave detectors.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/08654a5c20596f51f0b4cad5a8c939e9b3e2e173

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Citations in the corpus

Nonsingular cosmology with a scale-invariant spectrum of cosmological perturbations from Lee-Wick theory (2008, background): “These conclusions were confirmed in some specific models in which the bounce was smoothed out by making use of higher derivative gravity terms (see [57] in the case of the Pre-Big-Bang model and [58, 59] in the case of the Ekpyrotic scenario).”
Instability of spacelike and null orbifold singularities (2002, background): “Recently, interest has been refocussed on this question by the ekpyrotic cosmology [3], which requires [4] that the universe contract to a singularity and then reexpand.”
Issues in the Philosophy of Cosmology (2006, background): “state, for example Tolman’s series of expansion and collapse cycles [220], proposals for creation of the universe as a bubble formed in a flat space-time [221], Linde’s eternal chaotic inflation [141], Veneziano’s re-expansion from a previous collapse phase [90], the ekpyrotic universe proposal [124”
Quantum nature of the big bang: An analytical and numerical investigation (2006, background): “• How close to the Big Bang does a smooth space-time of general relativity make sense? In particular, can one show from first principles that this approximation is valid at the onset of inflation? • Is the Big-Bang singularity naturally resolved by quantum gravity? Or, is some external input such as”
Viscous Cosmology for Early- and Late-Time Universe (2017, methodology): “logical evolutions oﬀer a solution to the initial singularity problem [139]. Such models have been constructed in modiﬁed gravity constructions, such as in the Pre-Big-Bang [140] and in the Ekpyrotic [141] scenarios, in f(R) gravity [142–144], in f(T) gravity [145], in braneworld scenarios [146, 147”
A matrix big bang (2005, background): “(15) λ = e 2 3 QX+ .”
Brane-World Gravity (2004, background): “More exotic possibilities arise from the interaction between two branes, including possible collision, which is mediated by a 5D scalar field and which can induce either inflation [90, 157] or a hot big-bang radiation era, as in the “ekpyrotic” or cyclic scenario [163, 154, 251, 301, 193, 230, 307],”
Towards inflation in string theory (2003, background): “A similar situation emerged with the introduction of the ekpyrotic/cyclic scenario [34].”
The Matter Bounce Alternative to Inflationary Cosmology (2012, background): “In the Ekpyrotic bouncing cosmology [15] anisotropies decrease in importance in the contracting phase.”
Inflationary Cosmology after Planck 2013 (2014, background): “However, the original version of the ekpyrotic scenario [174] did not work.”