New Ekpyrotic Cosmology

In this paper, we present a new scenario of the early Universe that contains a pre big bang Ekpyrotic phase. By combining this with a ghost condensate, the theory explicitly violates the null energy condition without developing any ghost-like instabilities. Thus the contracting universe goes through a non-singular bounce and evolves smoothly into the expanding post big bang phase. The curvature perturbation acquires a scale-invariant spectrum well before the bounce in this scenario. It is sourced by the scale-invariant entropy perturbation engendered by two ekpyrotic scalar fields, a mechanism recently proposed by Lehners et al. Since the background geometry is non-singular at all times, the curvature perturbation remains nearly constant on super horizon scales. It emerges from the bounce unscathed and imprints a scale-invariant spectrum of density fluctuations in the matter-radiation fluid at the onset of the hot big bang phase. The ekpyrotic potential can be chosen so that the spectrum has a ``red'' tilt, in accordance with the recent data from WMAP. As in the original Ekpyrotic scenario, the model predicts a negligible gravity wave signal on all observable scales. As such ``New Ekpyrotic Cosmology" provides a consistent and distinguishable alternative to inflation to account for the origin of the seeds of large scale structure.