Singular Instantons Made Regular

Abstract

The singularity present in cosmological instantons of the Hawking-Turok type is resolved by a conformal transformation, where the conformal factor has a linear zero of codimension one. We show that if the underlying regular manifold is taken to have the topology of $R{P}^4$, and the conformal factor is taken to be a twisted field so that the zero is enforced, then one obtains a one-parameter family of solutions of the classical field equations, where the minimal action solution has the conformal zero located on a minimal volume noncontractible $R{P}^3$ submanifold. For instantons with two singularities, the corresponding topology is that of a cylinder $S^3\times [0,1]$ with D=4 analogues of `cross-caps' at each of the endpoints.

23 pages, compressed and RevTex file, including nine postscript figure files. Submitted version

References in corpus (5)

• Open Inflation Without False Vacua
• Open Inflation, the Four Form and the Cosmological Constant
• Quantum Creation of a Universe with $\Omega \ne 1$: Singular and Non-Singular Instantons
• Open inflation and the singular boundary
• Stability of Flat Space to Singular Instantons

Cited by in corpus (5)

• From Big Crunch to Big Bang
• Homogeneous Modes of Cosmological Instantons
• Why Does Inflation Start at the Top of the Hill?
• Closed Universes from Cosmological Instantons
• Singularities in and Stability of Ooguri-Vafa-Verlinde Cosmologies