Abstract
We investigate cosmological solutions of eleven dimensional supergravity compactified on a squashed seven manifold. The effective action for the four dimensional theory contains scalar fields describing the size and squashing of the compactifying space. The potential for these fields consists of a sum of exponential terms. At early times only one such term is expected to dominate. The condition for an exponential potential to admit inflationary solutions is derived and it is shown that inflation is not possible in our model. The criterion for an exponential potential to admit a Hawking-Turok instanton is also derived. It is shown that the instanton remains singular in eleven dimensions.
- Received 5 August 1998
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.59.023502
©1998 American Physical Society
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The Work of Stephen Hawking in Physical Review
To mark the passing of Stephen Hawking, we gathered together his 55 papers in Physical Review D and Physical Review Letters. They probe the edges of space and time, from "Black holes and thermodynamics” to "Wave function of the Universe."