Cosmological dynamics of brane gravity: A global dynamical system perspective

Abstract

The braneworld model of gravity is well-known for several notable cosmological features such as self-acceleration originating from a geometric and not matter source, effective dark energy behavior with phantom characteristics but not leading to a Big-Rip singularity, rough resemblance to the $\Lambda$CDM evolution, etc. The dynamical system tools usually allow us to obtain generic conclusions on the global dynamics of a system over a wide range of initial conditions. With this motivation, in order to recover the important features of the braneworld model from a more global perspective, here, we investigate the global cosmological dynamics of the braneworld model using dynamical system techniques. We first analyze the case where there is just a normal matter on the brane and then extend the analysis to the case with an extra scalar field also trapped on the brane. In the presence of a scalar field, potentials belonging to different classes are considered. The stability behavior of critical points is examined using linear stability analysis and when necessary center manifold theory as well as numerical perturbation techniques are also used. To understand the global dynamics of a dynamical system, we utilized the Poincar\'e compactification method to capture the properties of all possible critical points. Applying dynamical system analysis, we found that brane gravity is consistent with observed actions of the Universe. In particular, our analysis shows that important cosmological behaviors like the long-lasting matter-dominated era, late time acceleration as well as the avoidance of Big-Rip singularity can be realized in brane gravity for a wide range of initial conditions.