A Model for the Big Bounce

Abstract

I motivate a proposal for modeling, at weak string coupling, the ``Big Bounce" transition from a growing-curvature phase to standard (FRW) cosmology in terms of a pressure-less dense gas of "string-holes" (SH), string states lying on the correspondence curve between strings and black holes. During this phase SH evolve in such a way that temperature and (string-frame) curvature remain $O(M_s)$ and (a cosmological version of) the holographic entropy bound remains saturated. This reasoning also appears to imply a new interpretation of the Hagedorn phase transition in string theory.