A New Action for Cosmology

Abstract

We present a new action which reproduces the cosmological sector of general relativity in both the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) and Bianchi models. This action makes no reference to the scale factor, and is of a frictional type first examined by Herglotz. We demonstrate that the extremization of this action reproduces the usual dynamics of physical observables, and the symplectification of this action is the Einstein-Hilbert action for cosmological models. We end by discussing some of the increased explanatory power produced by considering the reduced physical ontology resulting from eliminating scale.

15 pages

References in corpus (5)

• Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections
• On the measure problem in slow roll inflation and loop quantum cosmology
• A Hamiltonian Formulation of the BKL Conjecture
• Liouville's Theorem and the canonical measure for nonconservative systems from contact geometry
• New Difficulties for the Past Hypothesis

Cited by in corpus (10)

• The Open Systems View and the Everett Interpretation
• When scale is surplus
• Herglotz Action for Homogeneous Cosmology
• Application of Herglotz's Variational Principle to Electromagnetic Systems with Dissipation
• A variational derivation of the field equations of an action-dependent Einstein-Hilbert Lagrangian
• Practical Introduction to Action-Dependent Field Theories
• Fermat's Principle in General Relativity via Herglotz Variational Formalism
• Deterministic evolution of gauge fields through a singularity
• New directions for contact integrators
• When action is not least for systems with action-dependent Lagrangians