The dynamical behaviour of homogeneous scalar-field spacetimes with general self-interaction potentials

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the full dynamical behavior of homogeneous scalar-field cosmologies with general self-interaction potentials, unifying previous cases and extending to include potentials with negative bounds, such as anti De Sitter states.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of scalar-field cosmologies with a broad class of potentials, including negative and divergent cases, unifying and extending previous studies.

Findings

Unified treatment of various scalar potentials.

Analysis of asymptotically anti De Sitter states.

Extension to wider class of physically relevant potentials.

Abstract

The dynamics of homogeneous Robertson--Walker cosmological models with a self-interacting scalar field source is examined here in full generality, requiring only the scalar field potential to be bounded from below and divergent when the field diverges. In this way we are able to give a unified treatment of all the already studied cases - such as positive potentials which exhibit asymptotically polynomial or exponential behaviors - together with its extension to a much wider set of physically sensible potentials. Since the set includes potentials with negative inferior bound, we are able to give, in particular, the analysis of the asymptotically anti De Sitter states for such cosmologies.