English

A New Action for Cosmology

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2021-02-24 v1

Abstract

We present a new action which reproduces the cosmological sector of general relativity in both the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) and Bianchi models. This action makes no reference to the scale factor, and is of a frictional type first examined by Herglotz. We demonstrate that the extremization of this action reproduces the usual dynamics of physical observables, and the symplectification of this action is the Einstein-Hilbert action for cosmological models. We end by discussing some of the increased explanatory power produced by considering the reduced physical ontology resulting from eliminating scale.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2010.07329,
  title  = {A New Action for Cosmology},
  author = {David Sloan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.07329},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

15 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-23T19:21:26.295Z