Cosmological viability of anisotropic inflation in Thurston spacetimes

Abstract

Recent observations of large-scale statistical isotropy violations have prompted the adoption of anisotropic cosmological models that account for inherent directional curvature. Studies of these anisotropic spacetimes have shown how they can explain the evolutionary dynamics and light propagation in the universe. Here, we consider one such interesting set of spacetimes that preserve homogeneity but place no constraint on isotropy during the inflationary epoch, to examine whether we can address the possibility of anisotropic inflation in the universe. Researchers have proposed inflationary models in which a vector field coupled to the inflaton is found to violate the cosmic no-hair theorem for the anisotropic Bianchi type I spacetime, due to the existence of a stable anisotropically inflationary fixed point. Lately, this study has been extended to axisymmetric spacetimes of Bianchi type II, III, and the Kantowski-Sachs metric, and it has been inferred that the entire family of spacetimes is attracted to the anisotropic Bianchi I fixed point. By constructing inflationary models where the spatial slices are anisotropic Thurston 3-geometries, we demonstrate that the intrinsic eccentricity of the background geometry induces an isotropy-violating vector field. This field, through its coupling to the inflaton, triggers a secondary phase of anisotropic inflation. We perform dynamical stability and phase-space analyses to assess the feasibility of anisotropic inflation. The results for the considered set of Thurston geometries showed the presence of a unique, stable inflationary fixed point that converges, similar to those in Bianchi spacetimes, thereby indicating the cosmological viability of inflation with anisotropic hair.