Inflation with a Negative Cosmological Constant

Abstract

We find a unique way of realizing inflation through cyclic phases in an universe with negative vacuum energy. According to the second law of thermodynamics entropy monotonically increases from cycle to cycle, typically by a constant factor. This means that the scale factor at the same energy density in consecutive cycles also increases by a constant factor. If the time period of the oscillations remain approximately constant then this leads to an ``over all'' exponential growth of the scale factor, mimicking inflation. A graceful exit from this inflationary phase is possible as a dynamical scalar field can take us from the negative to a positive energy vacuum during the last contracting phase.

replaced to match the journal version, title changed

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