A note on the viability of Gauss-Bonnet cosmology

Abstract

In this Letter, we analyze the viability of a vacuum Gauss-Bonnet cosmology by examining the dynamics of the homogeneous and anisotropic background in 4+1 dimensions. The trajectories of the system either originate from the standard singularity or from non-standard type, the later is characterized by the divergence of time derivative of the Hubble parameters for its finite value. At the onset, the system should relax to Einstein phase at late times as the effect of Gauss-Bonnet term becomes negligible in the low energy regime. However, we find that most of the trajectories emerging from the standard big-bang singularity lead to future re-collapse whereas the system beginning its evolution from the non-standard singularity enters the Kasner regime at late times. This leads to the conclusion that the measure of trajectories giving rise to a smooth evolution from a standard singularity to the Einstein phase is negligibly small for generic initial conditions.