Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 70 4 c ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
There are two normalization problems in the printed energy identity. In conformal time, the physical density of a homogeneous scalar is , and its kinetic contribution contains , not one power of . The conformal density of a canonical scalar field follows directly from the stress-energy tensor:Writing , the condition gives , henceThe reconstruction is consistent with this corrected identity; the unsquared printed identity cannot hold as an energy relation.
The constant-equation-of-state density scaling for this coasting fluid gives , where . Choose the branch on which increases. ThenKeeping all three density parameters explicitly, the Friedmann equations in conformal time giveFor , defineThe square root is . Integrating on the expanding branch giveswhere . Thus the scalar-field reconstruction of a coasting component isSubstitution into the potential gives the requested present-field parametrization:The domain is the branch where and the hyperbolic argument is positive; reversing the direction of the field changes the sign of . The actual discriminant condition is . The supplied stronger bound suffices for physical density fractions . No density parameter has been eliminated using the flatness sum.
As a check, is constant and . Since along this solution, identically. The reconstructed field therefore satisfies its equation of motion as well as the Friedmann equations and required equation of state.