Transient Quintessence from Group Manifold Reductions or how all roads lead to Rome

TL;DR

This paper explores cosmological acceleration driven by scalar fields with exponential potentials, linking group manifold reductions to supergravity and M-theory, and analyzing the geometric and brane configurations involved.

Contribution

It introduces multi-exponential scalar potentials from 3D group manifold reductions and connects them to gauged supergravities and M-theory origins.

Findings

Quintessence occurs within the 'arctic circle' on a sphere representation.

Multi-exponential potentials can be embedded in gauged supergravities with M-theory origins.

Triple exponential cases suggest the existence of exotic S-branes in higher dimensions.

Abstract

We investigate the accelerating phases of cosmologies supported by a metric, scalars and a single exponential scalar potential. The different solutions can be represented by trajectories on a sphere and we find that quintessence happens within the "arctic circle" of the sphere. Furthermore, we obtain multi-exponential potentials from 3D group manifold reductions of gravity, implying that such potentials can be embedded in gauged supergravities with an M-theory origin. We relate the double exponential case to flux compactifications on maximally symmetric spaces and S-branes. In the triple exponential case our analysis suggests the existence of two exotic S(D-3)-branes in D dimensions.