Light-like Big Bang singularities in string and matrix theories

Abstract

Important open questions in cosmology require a better understanding of the Big Bang singularity. In string and matrix theories, light-like analogues of cosmological singularities (singular plane wave backgrounds) turn out to be particularly tractable. We give a status report on the current understanding of such light-like Big Bang models, presenting both solved and open problems.

20 pages, invited review for Class. Quant. Grav; v3: section 2.3 shortened, discussion on DLCQ added in section 3.1, published version

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• Left/right entanglement and thermalization of time dependent plane wave Green-Schwarz superstring
• Aspects of Plane Wave (Matrix) String Dynamics
• On the breakdown of the perturbative interaction picture in Big Crunch/Big Bang or the true reason why perturbative string amplitudes on temporal orbifolds diverge