English

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 E10_{10} (for type II) or BE10_{10} (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.

Keywords

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