English

Instability of Spacelike and Null Orbifold Singularities

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-10-09 v2

Abstract

Time dependent orbifolds with spacelike or null singularities have recently been studied as simple models of cosmological singularities. We show that their apparent simplicity is an illusion: the introduction of a single particle causes the spacetime to collapse to a strong curvature singularity (a Big Crunch), even in regions arbitrarily far from the particle.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0206228,
  title  = {Instability of Spacelike and Null Orbifold Singularities},
  author = {Gary T. Horowitz and Joseph Polchinski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0206228},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

16 pages. References and comments added. Discussion of Milne with shift corrected

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:11:42.602Z