In this thesis we study the dynamics of higher-dimensional gravity in a universe emerging from a brane collision. We develop a set of powerful analytic methods which, we believe, render braneworld cosmological perturbation theory solvable. Our particular concern is to determine the extent to which the four-dimensional effective theory accurately captures the higher-dimensional dynamics about th...

A large class of $\Lambda < 0$ cosmologies have big-bang / big crunch spacetimes with time-symmetric backgrounds and asymptotically AdS Euclidean continuations suggesting a possible holographic realization. We argue that these models generically time-dependent scalar fields, can lead to realistic at the level homogeneous background geometry, an accelerating phase prior turnaround crunch. first ...

Cosmological solutions of gravity coupled to scalar fields, with arbitrary scalar potential, were recently shown to be geodesics in an appropriately augmented, and conformally rescaled, target space. Here we obtain these geodesics as solutions of the Euler-Lagrange equations of a relativistic particle action. As an application, we find some exact (flat and curved) cosmologies for models with N ...

We consider branes N in a Schwarzschild-AdS(n+2) bulk, where the stress energy tensor is dominated by the energy density of a scalar fields map φ : N → S with potential V , where S is a semiRiemannian moduli space. By transforming the field equation appropriately, we get an equivalent field equation that is smooth across the singularity r = 0, and which has smooth and uniquely determined soluti...

Big – Bang and Big – Crunch (BB-BC) optimization method for multioptimization of economic load dispatch and emission dispatch of thermal power generating stations is presented using weighted sum method, trade-off solutions are obtained assuming decision makers (DM) requirements by solving optimal power flows. BB-BC optimization which is a nonderivative, population search optimization procedure ...