Qualitative analysis of dissipative cosmologies

TL;DR

This paper uses dynamical systems to analyze homogeneous, isotropic dissipative cosmologies with bulk viscosity, revealing most solutions inflate but few are physically viable due to energy condition violations.

Contribution

It applies the truncated Israel-Stewart theory to classify and evaluate the physical viability of cosmological solutions with dissipation.

Findings

Most solutions exhibit inflationary behavior.

Few solutions satisfy the dominant energy condition.

Dissipative effects influence cosmological evolution.

Abstract

The evolution of an homogeneous and isotropic dissipative fluid is analyzed using dynamical systems techniques. The dissipation is driven by bulk viscous pressure and the truncated Israel-Stewart theory is used. Although almost all solutions inflate, we show that only few of them can be considered as physical solutions since the dominant energy condition is not satisfied.