On the Instability of the Lee-Wick Bounce

Abstract

It was recently realized that a model constructed from a Lee-Wick type scalar field theory yields, at the level of homogeneous and isotropic background cosmology, a bouncing cosmology. However, bouncing cosmologies induced by pressure-less matter are in general unstable to the addition of relativistic matter (i.e. radiation). Here we study the possibility of obtaining a bouncing cosmology if we add radiation coupled to the Lee-Wick scalar field. This coupling in principle would allow the energy to flow from radiation to matter, thus providing a drain for the radiation energy. However, we find that it takes an extremely unlikely fine tuning of the initial phases of the field configurations for a sufficient amount of radiative energy to flow into matter. For general initial conditions, the evolution leads to a singularity rather than a smooth bounce.