From p-branes to Cosmology

TL;DR

This paper explores the connection between p-brane solutions in string theory and cosmological models, showing how extremal and non-extremal p-branes can represent various cosmological scenarios, including those with cosmological terms.

Contribution

It introduces methods to generalize extremal p-branes to non-extremal forms and maps these to cosmological solutions, expanding understanding of their relationship in string/M-theory.

Findings

Mapping of cosmological models to non-extremal p-brane solutions

Extension of solutions to include cosmological-type terms

Framework for relating brane solutions to cosmology

Abstract

We study the relationship between static p-brane solitons and cosmological solutions of string theory or M-theory. We discuss two different ways in which extremal p-branes can be generalised to non-extremal ones, and show how wide classes of recently discussed cosmological models can be mapped into non-extremal p-brane solutions of one of these two kinds. We also extend previous discussions of cosmological solutions to include some that make use of cosmological-type terms in the effective action that can arise from the generalised dimensional reduction of string theory or M-theory.