Abstract:
The effects of torsion in the early universe on the subsequent evolution are investigated theoretically. The focus is on the simple Einstein-Cartan generalization of conventional big-bang cosmology studied by de Sabbata and Sivaram (1989), but here a massless scalar field with no quartic self-coupling is considered. As in the case with a massive field, a torsion-dominated phase in the early universe leads naturally to negative pressure and inflationary expansion.