Cosmological phase space analysis of the F (X) - V (phi) scalar field and bouncing solutions

TL;DR

This paper performs a phase space analysis of a scalar field cosmology with a modified kinetic term, identifying critical points and stability, and explores conditions for a nonsingular bounce.

Contribution

It extends the dynamical system analysis to scalar fields with general kinetic functions, revealing stability properties and bounce conditions.

Findings

Critical points reduce to canonical case when F(X)=X

Stability analysis of scalar field solutions

Conditions for nonsingular bounce identified

Abstract

We analyze the dynamical system defined by a universe filled with a barotropic fluid plus a scalar field with modified kinetic term of the form L = F (X) - V (phi). After a suitable choice of variables that allows us to study the phase space of the system we obtain the critical points and their stability. We find that they reduce to the ones defined for the canonical case when F (X) = X. We also study the field energy conditions to have a nonsingular bounce.