Supersmoothing through slow contraction
William G. Cook (Theoretisch-Physikalisches Institut, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena, Germany); Iryna A. Glushchenko (Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, USA); Anna Ijjas (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute), Hannover, Germany, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität, Hannover, Germany); Frans Pretorius (Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, USA); Paul J. Steinhardt (Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, USA)
Performing a fully non-perturbative analysis using the tools of numerical general relativity, we demonstrate that a period of slow contraction is a “supersmoothing” cosmological phase that homogenizes, isotropizes and flattens the universe both classically and quantum mechanically and can do so far more robustly and rapidly than had been realized in earlier studies.