Phantoms and strange attractors in cosmology

We study a cosmological model of gravity coupled to three, self-interacting scalar fields, one of them with negative kinetic term. The theory has cosmological solutions described by three-dimensional quadratic autonomous equations. Remarkably, the dynamical system has strange attractors, which are in fact very similar to the classic Lorenz attractor. The associated chaotic cosmologies exhibit highly fluctuating periods of contraction and expansion, alternating with long, steady periods in a de Sitter-like phase.

Automated summary

This article presents a cosmological model that incorporates gravity coupled with three interacting scalar fields. The dynamical system of these scalar fields exhibits strange attractors similar to the classic Lorenz attractor, leading to chaotic behavior in cosmology.