Recollapsing spacetimes with $\Lambda<0$

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that certain homogeneous spacetimes with negative cosmological constant recollapse and form singularities, with the presence of a scalar field causing curvature blow-up, highlighting generic behavior near homogeneous initial data.

Contribution

It establishes recollapse and singularity formation in homogeneous spacetimes with negative , and shows scalar fields induce curvature blow-up, extending these results to nearby initial data.

Findings

Recollapse occurs in homogeneous -negative spacetimes.

Some singularities are not curvature singularities due to bounded Kretschmann scalar.

Scalar fields cause curvature blow-up at both spacetime ends.

Abstract

We show that any homogeneous initial data set with $\Lambda<0$ on a product 3-manifold of the orthogonal form $(F\times \mathbb S^1,a_0^2dz^2+b_0^2\sigma^2,c_0dz^2+d_0\sigma)$, where $(F,\sigma)$ is a closed 2-surface of constant curvature and $a_0,..., d_0$ are suitable constants, recollapses under the Einstein-flow with a negative cosmological constant and forms crushing singularities at the big bang and the big crunch, respectively. Towards certain singularities among those the Kretschmann scalar remains bounded, hence these are not curvature singularities. We then show that the presence of a massless scalar field causes the Kretschmann scalar to blow-up towards both ends of spacetime for all solutions in the corresponding class. By standard arguments this recollapsing behaviour extends to an open neighborhood in the set of initial data sets and is in this sense generic close to the homogeneous regime.