Open and Closed Cosmological Solutions of Horava-Witten Theory

TL;DR

This paper generalizes cosmological solutions in Horava-Witten theory to include spatial curvature, revealing new solutions with open and closed geometries and analyzing their behavior in higher dimensions.

Contribution

It introduces generalized cosmological solutions with non-zero spatial curvature in Horava-Witten theory, including solutions with open spatial sections and a non-zero Ramond-Ramond scalar.

Findings

Closed solutions have initial and final singularities.

Open solutions evolve from singularity to supersymmetric domain wall.

A solution with non-zero Ramond-Ramond scalar is presented.

Abstract

The cosmological solutions of Horava-Witten theory discovered by Lukas, Ovrut and Waldram are generalized to allow non vanishing spatial curvature. The solution with closed spatial sections has initial and final curvature singularities. We find two solutions with open spatial sections, both of which evolve from an initial curvature singularity to the supersymmetric domain wall solution at late times. We also present a solution with open spatial sections and a non-zero Ramond-Ramond scalar. The behaviour of the solutions in eleven dimensions is discussed.