Ekpyrotic Cosmology with a Zero-Shear S-Brane

Abstract: In a paper we proposed a mechanism for a continuous transition between a contracting Ekpyrotic phase and the Standard Big Bang phase of expansion: the bounce is generated by an S-brane which represents the effects of higher mass string states in the low energy effective field theory. We showed that gravitational waves on cosmological scales obtain a nearly scale-invariant spectrum. Here, we study the cosmological fluctuations in this setup, assuming that the S-brane has zero shear. We find a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of cosmological perturbations with a slight red tilt. The scenario yields two consistency relations for cosmological observations, the first one relating the tensor to scalar ratio with the scalar spectral tilt, the second relating the tensor tilt to the scalar tilt. The predicted tensor to scalar ratio is within the reach of upcoming CMB observations. The tensor tilt is blue.