Colliding Branes and Formation of Spacetime Singularities

TL;DR

This paper presents analytic solutions describing colliding branes in five-dimensional spacetime, showing that such collisions typically lead to singularities unless energy conditions are violated, which could inform theories of spacetime singularity formation.

Contribution

It introduces a new class of analytic solutions for colliding branes in five dimensions and analyzes conditions for avoiding singularities.

Findings

Spacelike singularities form after brane collisions in most cases.

Non-singular solutions require both branes to violate energy conditions.

The solutions provide insights into the dynamics of brane collisions and singularity formation.

Abstract

We construct a class of analytic solutions with two free parameters to the five-dimensional Einstein field equations, which represents the collision of two timelike 3-branes. We study the local and global properties of the spacetime, and find that spacelike singularities generically develop after the collision, due to the mutual focus of the two branes. Non-singular spacetime can be constructed only in the case where both of the two branes violate the energy conditions.