Oscillating 4-Polytopal Universe in Regge Calculus

Abstract

The discretized closed Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) universe with positive cosmological constant is investigated by Regge calculus. According to the Collins-Williams formalism, a hyperspherical Cauchy surface is replaced with regular 4-polytopes. Numerical solutions to the Regge equations approximate well to the continuum solution during the era of small edge length. Unlike the expanding polyhedral universe in three dimensions, the 4-polytopal universes repeat expansions and contractions. To go beyond the approximation using regular 4-polytopes we introduce pseudo-regular 4-polytopes by averaging the dihedral angles of the tessellated regular 600-cell. The degree of precision of the tessellation is called the frequency. Regge equations for the pseudo-regular 4-polytope have simple and unique expressions for any frequency. In the infinite frequency limit, the pseudo-regular 4-polytope model approaches the continuum FLRW universe.

Comments: 24 pages, 9 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1612.06536