Timothy Walton

This paper invokes a new mechanism for reducing a coupled system of fields (including Einstein's equations without a cosmological constant) to equations that possess solutions exhibiting characteristics of immediate relevance to current observational astronomy. Our approach is formulated as a classical Einstein-vector-scalar-Maxwell-fluid field theory on a spacetime with three-sphere spatial sections. Analytic cosmological solutions are found using local charts familiar from standard LFRW cosmological models. These solutions can be used to describe different types of evolution for the metric scale factor, the Hubble, jerk and de-acceleration functions, the scalar spacetime curvature and the Kretschmann invariant. The cosmological sector of the theory accommodates a particular single big-bang scenario followed by an eternal exponential acceleration of the scale factor. Such a solution does not require an externally prescribed fluid equation of state and leads to a number of new predictions including a current value of the "jerk" parameter, "Hopfian-like" source-free Maxwell field configurations with magnetic helicity and distributional "bi-polar" solutions exhibiting a new charge conjugation symmetry. An approximate scheme for field perturbations about this particular cosmology is explored and its consequences for a thermalisation process and a thermal history are derived, leading to a prediction of the time interval between the big-bang and the decoupling era. Finally it is shown that field couplings exist where both vector and scalar localised linearised perturbations exhibit dispersive wave-packet behaviours. The scalar perturbation may also give rise to Yukawa solutions associated with a massive Klein-Gordon particle. It is argued that the vector and scalar fields may offer candidates for "dark-energy" and "dark-matter" respectively.