Novel relationship between shear and energy density at the bounce in nonsingular Bianchi I spacetimes

Abstract

In classical Bianchi I spacetimes, underlying conditions for what dictates the singularity structure---whether it is anisotropic shear or energy density, can be easily determined from the generalized Friedmann equation. However, in nonsingular bouncing anisotropic models these insights are difficult to obtain in the quantum gravity regime where the singularity is resolved at a nonvanishing mean volume which can be large compared to the Planck volume, depending on the initial conditions. Such nonsingular models may also lack a generalized Friedmann equation making the task even more difficult. We address this problem in an effective spacetime description of loop quantum cosmology (LQC) where energy density and anisotropic shear are universally bounded due to quantum geometry effects, but a generalized Friedmann equation has been difficult to derive due to the underlying complexity. Performing extensive numerical simulations of effective Hamiltonian dynamics, we bring to light a surprising, seemingly universal relationship between energy density and anisotropic shear at the bounce in LQC. For a variety of initial conditions for a massless scalar field, an inflationary potential, and two types of ekpyrotic potentials we find that the values of energy density and the anisotropic shear at the quantum bounce follow a novel parabolic relationship which reveals some surprising results about the anisotropic nature of the bounce, such as that the maximum value of the anisotropic shear at the bounce is reached when the energy density reaches approximately half of its maximum allowed value. The relationship we find can prove very useful for developing our understanding of the degree of anisotropy of the bounce, isotropization of the postbounce universe, and discovering the modified generalized Friedmann equation in Bianchi I models with quantum gravity corrections.