English

On the total energy of open Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universes

Astrophysics 2009-11-07 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The idea that the universe has zero total energy when one includes the contribution from the gravitational field is reconsidered. A Hamiltonian is proposed as an energy for the exact equations of FRW cosmology: it is then shown that this energy is constant. Thus open and critically open FRW universes have the energy of their asymptotic state of infinite dilution, which is Minkowski space with zero energy. It is then shown that de Sitter space, the inflationary attractor, also has zero energy, and the argument is generalized to Bianchi models converging to this attractor.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0212574,
  title  = {On the total energy of open Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universes},
  author = {V. Faraoni and F. I. Cooperstock},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0212574},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

13 pages, Latex. To appear in Ap. J