The inverse mean curvature flow in Robertson-Walker spaces and its application to cosmology

Claus Gerhardt

Published 2004-04-27, updated 2004-04-28Version 2

We consider the inverse mean curvature flow in Robertson-Walker spacetimes that satisfy the Einstein equations and have a big crunch singularity and prove that under natural conditions the rescaled inverse mean curvature flow provides a smooth transition from big crunch to big bang. We also construct an example showing that in general the transition flow is only of class $C^3$.