E_(10), BE_(10) and Arithmetical Chaos in Superstring Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Theory
2010-04-06 v2 Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Abstract
It is shown that the never ending oscillatory behaviour of the generic solution, near a cosmological singularity, of the massless bosonic sector of superstring theory can be described as a billiard motion within a simplex in 9-dimensional hyperbolic space. The Coxeter group of reflections of this billiard is discrete and is the Weyl group of the hyperbolic Kac-Moody algebra E (for type II) or BE (for type I or heterotic), which are both arithmetic. These results lead to a proof of the chaotic (``Anosov'') nature of the classical cosmological oscillations, and suggest a ``chaotic quantum billiard'' scenario of vacuum selection in string theory.
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-th/0012172,
title = {E_(10), BE_(10) and Arithmetical Chaos in Superstring Cosmology},
author = {Thibault Damour and Marc Henneaux},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0012172},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
4 pages, 1 figure, minor changes in the text, two references added