The Strong Energy Condition and the S-Brane Singularity Problem

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether violating the Strong Energy Condition (SEC) can prevent singularities in S-Brane spacetimes, concluding that SEC violation alone may not be sufficient, but proposes potential ways to address this challenge.

Contribution

It demonstrates the difficulty of avoiding S-Brane singularities through SEC violation and introduces two possible methods to overcome this limitation.

Findings

SEC violation alone may not prevent S-Brane singularities

Asymptotically deSitter S-brane spacetimes are hard to make non-singular

Proposes two approaches to potentially avoid singularities

Abstract

Recently it has been argued that, because tachyonic matter satisfies the Strong Energy Condition [SEC], there is little hope of avoiding the singularities which plague S-Brane spacetimes. Meanwhile, however, Townsend and Wohlfarth have suggested an ingenious way of circumventing the SEC in such situations, and other suggestions for actually violating it in the S-Brane context have recently been proposed. Of course, the natural context for discussions of [effective or actual] violations of the SEC is the theory of asymptotically deSitter spacetimes, which tend to be less singular than ordinary FRW spacetimes. However, while violating or circumventing the SEC is necessary if singularities are to be avoided, it is not at all clear that it is sufficient. That is, we can ask: would an asymptotically deSitter S-brane spacetime be non-singular? We show that this is difficult to achieve; this result is in the spirit of the recently proved "S-brane singularity theorem". Essentially our results suggest that circumventing or violating the SEC may not suffice to solve the S-Brane singularity problem, though we do propose two ways of avoiding this conclusion.