Self-interacting p-forms and the shear-free anisotropic cosmological model
Abstract
The cosmological principle may require more than observations demand: what is needed is isotropic expansion without vorticity. Extended Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (eFLRW) cosmologies realise this with a non-vanishing anisotropic spatial curvature that is balanced by an anisotropic stress while the shear vanishes. Thorsrud and others investigated such scenarios for free differential p-forms. Here we extend the analysis to non-Abelian p-forms (p=0,…,4) with self interactions. The balance requires the anisotropic stress to decay as a−2, a being the cosmological scale factor, which we combine with the gauge-field continuity equation. The general results indicate that, in the presence of a potential, fine-tuning of the same is needed in order to balance the curvature. Notably, this is not the case for a $3$-form field underlineHa with a potential term V(underlineH2)=A+B underlineH2, where A and B are constants: in Bianchi class A, an uncharged 3-form balances the curvature with this potential without any tuning, and a charged one does so for a suitably chosen connection. This is the only candidate we have found where the potential does not require tuning. It is also an interesting candidate as it can be interpreted as a cosmological constant in combination with a dark-matter sector mimicking curvature.
Related
- From Non-Thermal to Thermal: Cosmological Imprints of Self-Interacting Secluded Dark Matter
- Cosmological evolution and late-time attractors in axion-monopole interacting dark energy
- Cosmological anatomy of interacting dark energy
- To collapse or not to collapse: Halo evolution with self-interacting dark matter mass segregation
- Spectral theory for dynamical large deviations in non-Markov self-interacting processes
BibTeX
@misc{hernandez2026selfinteracting,
title = {{Self-interacting $p$-forms and the shear-free anisotropic cosmological model}},
author = {Nicolas Hernandez and Ben D. Normann and Yeinzon Rodriguez},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.07288},
eprint = {2611.07288},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07288},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Self-interacting p-forms and the shear-free anisotropic cosmological model
AU - Nicolas Hernandez
AU - Ben D. Normann
AU - Yeinzon Rodriguez
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.07288
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.07288
AB - The cosmological principle may require more than observations demand: what is needed is isotropic expansion without vorticity. Extended Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (eFLRW) cosmologies realise this with a non-vanishing anisotropic spatial curvature that is balanced by an anisotropic stress while the shear vanishes. Thorsrud and others investigated such scenarios for free differential p-forms. Here we extend the analysis to non-Abelian p-forms (p=0,…,4) with self interactions. The balance requires the anisotropic stress to decay as a^−2, a being the cosmological scale factor, which we combine with the gauge-field continuity equation. The general results indicate that, in the presence of a potential, fine-tuning of the same is needed in order to balance the curvature. Notably, this is not the case for a $3$-form field underlineH^a with a potential term V(underlineH^2)=A+B underlineH^2, where A and B are constants: in Bianchi class A, an uncharged 3-form balances the curvature with this potential without any tuning, and a charged one does so for a suitably chosen connection. This is the only candidate we have found where the potential does not require tuning. It is also an interesting candidate as it can be interpreted as a cosmological constant in combination with a dark-matter sector mimicking curvature.
ER -