The Confining Heterotic Brane Gas: A Non-Inflationary Solution to the Entropy and Horizon Problems of Standard Cosmology

We propose a mechanism for solving the horizon and entropy problems of standard cosmology which does not make use of cosmological inflation. Crucial ingredients of our scenario are brane gases, extra dimensions, and a confining potential due to string gas effects which becomes dominant at string-scale brane separations. The initial conditions are taken to be a statistically homogeneous and isotropic hot brane gas in a space in which all spatial dimensions are of string scale. The extra dimensions which end up as the internal ones are orbifolded. The hot brane gas leads to an initial phase (Phase 1) of isotropic expansion. Once the bulk energy density has decreased sufficiently, a weak confining potential between the two orbifold fixed planes begins to dominate, leading to a contraction of the extra spatial dimensions (Phase 2). String modes which contain momentum about the dimensions perpendicular to the orbifold fixed planes provide a repulsive potential which prevents the two orbifold fixed planes from colliding. The radii of the extra dimensions stabilize, and thereafter our three spatial dimensions expand as in standard cosmology. The energy density after the stabilization of the extra dimensions is of string scale, whereas the spatial volume has greatly increased during Phases 1 and 2, thus leading to a non-inflationary solution of the horizon and entropy problems.