Higher-dimensional homogeneous cosmological models as autonomous dynamical systems (Q756223)

The author considers homogeneous cosmological models in an arbitrary number of dimensions, n. Introducing volume and anisotropy coordinates and re-scaling the canonical momenta by the expansion rate, the author shows that the explicit time dependence of the modified Hamiltonian equations can be eliminated. This means that the Einstein field equations can be written as a system of 2n-2 autonomous first-order differential equations. The elimination of explicit time-dependence is possible without adding another dimension to the phase space because of the scaling property of the Ricci tensor, and because of a zero-energy constraint. The autonomous first order system describes the evolution of an n-1 dimensional vector y(T) which is essentially the anisotropic vector scaled to the expansion/contraction rate. The vector y represents a natural parametrization of the Kasner exponents. This permits an interpretation of the author's first order system as a continuous version of the discrete mixmaster map, describing Kasner epochs as well as periods of transition between epochs.