Perfect fluid of p-branes, 2D dilaton gravity and the big-bang

This paper starts by building the energy–momentum tensor of a perfect fluid of p-branes coupled to (p+4)-dimensional general relativity. Having three homogeneous and isotropic macroscopical spatial dimensions, the system gravity/fluid can be reduced to an effective theory over the branes. For the string fluid (p=1) the effective theory is nothing but the 2D dilaton gravity where the potential for the scalar field, which is the scale factor of the macroscopical space, is fixed by the state equation and the three-dimensional geometry. This theory can be solved allowing us to compare some relevant aspects in our homogeneous and isotropic string cosmologies with those of the Robertson–Walker ones. In particular, unlike the point-particle models, the existence of an initial singularity is strongly sensitive to the state equation, and it is remarkable that this model picks out the radiation state equation as the canonical case where the big-bang is kinematically forbidden. Moreover, we cannot reduce the Robertson–Walker cosmologies to the limit when the string size approaches to zero, because the existence of an upper bound on the string size is not compatible with the big-bang. Some examples are presented.