Brane cosmology with an anisotropic bulk – Dani Steer

Date: Fri. February 11th, 2005, 11:30 am-12:30 pm
Location: Rockefeller 221

In the context of brane cosmology, a scenario where our universe is a 3+1-dimensional surface (the “brane”) embedded in a five-dimensional spacetime (the “bulk”), we focus on geometries for which the brane is anisotropic though still homogeneous. The main question we address is the following: can an anisotropic brane be sourced by a perfect fluid? As opposed to standard 4D cosmology, we argue that this may only be possible for very specific perfect fluid sources.