English

A topological model for inflation

General Physics 2018-12-20 v1

Abstract

In this paper we will discuss a new model for inflation based on topological ideas. For that purpose we will consider the change of the topology of the spatial component seen as compact 3-manifold. We analyzed the topology change by using Morse theory and handle body decomposition of manifolds. For the general case of a topology change of a nn-manifold, we are forced to introduce a scalar field with quadratic potential or double well potential. Unfortunately these cases are ruled out by the CMB results of the Planck misssion. In case of 3-manifolds there is another possibility which uses deep results in differential topology of 4-manifolds. With the help of these results we will show that in case of a fixed homology of the 3-manifolds one will obtain a scalar field potential which is conformally equivalent to the Starobinsky model. The free parameter of the Starobinsky model can be expressed by the topological invariants of the 3-manifold. Furthermore we are able to express the number of e-folds as well as the energy and length scale by the Chern-Simons invariant of the final 3-manifold. We will apply these result to a specific model which was used by us to discuss the appearance of the cosmological constant with an experimentally confirmed value.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1812.08158,
  title  = {A topological model for inflation},
  author = {Torsten Asselmeyer-Maluga and Jerzy Krol},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.08158},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

ReVTeX, 23 pages, 4 figures, supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (Grant No. 60671). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:gr-qc/0602086, arXiv:1001.5259 by other authors

R2 v1 2026-06-23T06:49:34.028Z