Professor Wheeler and the Crack of Doom: Closed Cosmologies in the 5-d Kaluza-Klein Theory
Abstract
The authors study the classical and the quantum structures of certain 5-d Kaluza-Klein cosmologies. These models were chosen because their 4-d restriction is a closed, radiation-dominated, homogeneous, isotropic cosmology in the usual sense. The extra (field) dimension is taken to be a circle. In these models the solution starts from a 5-d curvature singularity with infinite circumference for the circle and zero volume for the 3-space. It evolves in finite proper time to a solution with zero dimension for the extra field direction. In the 5-vacuum case this is not a curvature singularity, but is a singularity of the congruence describing the physics, and in particular, the solution cannot causally be extended to the future of this point.
- Publication:
-
Between Quantum and Cosmos
- Pub Date:
- 1988
- Bibcode:
- 1988bqc..book..122M