1. Microphysical manifestations of viscosity and consequences for anisotropies in the very early universe
- Author
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Ganguly, Chandrima and Quintin, Jerome
- Subjects
High Energy Physics - Theory ,Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) ,010308 nuclear & particles physics ,FOS: Physical sciences ,General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) ,01 natural sciences ,General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology ,High Energy Physics - Phenomenology ,High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) ,High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) ,0103 physical sciences ,010306 general physics ,Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics - Abstract
It has been known that a non-perfect fluid that accounts for dissipative viscous effects can evade a highly anisotropic chaotic mixmaster approach to a singularity. Viscosity is often simply parameterised in this context, so it remains unclear whether isotropisation can really occur in physically motivated contexts. We present a few examples of microphysical manifestations of viscosity in fluids that interact either gravitationally or, for a scalar field for instance, through a self-coupling term in the potential. In each case, we derive the viscosity coefficient and comment on the applicability of the approximations involved when dealing with dissipative non-perfect fluids. Upon embedding the fluids in a cosmological context, we then show the extent to which these models allow for isotropisation of the universe in the approach to a singularity. We first do this in the context of expansion anisotropy only, i.e., in the case of a Bianchi type-I universe. We then include anisotropic 3-curvature modelled by the Bianchi type-IX metric. It is found that a self-interacting scalar field at finite temperature allows for efficient isotropisation, whether in a Bianchi type-I or type-IX spacetime, although the model is not tractable all the way to a singularity. Mixmaster chaotic behaviour, which is well known to arise in anisotropic models including anisotropic 3-curvature, is found to be suppressed in the latter case as well. We find that the only model permitting an isotropic singularity is that of a dense gas of black holes., Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures; v2: typos corrected, clarifications and references added; v3: more clarifications and references added, matches published version
- Published
- 2022