Chaotic Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Cosmology

CLAUDIO EL HASI; ESTEBAN CALZETTA

CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM GRAVITY

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Año: 1993 vol. 10 p. 1825 - 1841

0264-9381

We show that the dynamics of a spatially dosed Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe conformally coupled to a real, free, massive scalar field, is chaotic, for large enough field amplitudes. We do so by proving that this system is integrable under the adiabatic approximation, but that the corresponding KAM tori break up when non-adiabatic terms are considered. This finding is confirmed by numerical evaluation of the Lyapunov exponents associated with the system, among other criteria. Chaos sets strong limitations on our ability to predict the value of the field at the big crunch, from its given value at the big bang.