On the Stability of Static Ghost Cosmologies

We consider the linear stability of a static universe filled with a non-interacting mixture of isotropic radiation and a ghost scalar field. Unlike the conventional Einstein static model, this cosmology is stable against homogeneous and isotropic perturbations. This is shown by means of exact oscillatory solutions about the original static state. Using covariant techniques, we also examine the linear response of the static ghost universe to all types of inhomogeneous fluctuations, namely density, vorticity and gravitational-wave perturbations. The results show that the static background constrains the linear evolution of these distortions, to the extent that density perturbations remain time invariant, vortical distortions vanish and gravitational waves oscillate with constant amplitude. We discuss potential implications of these results for past-eternal initial states in classical general relativistic cosmology.