On Radiative Fluids in Anisotropic Spacetimes

Abstract We apply the second-order Israel-Stewart theory of relativistic fluidand thermodynamics to a physically realistic model of a radiative fluid in a simple anisotropic cosmological background. We investigate the asymptotic future of the resulting cosmological model and review the role of the dissipative phenomena in the early Universe. We demonstrate that the transport properties of the fluid alone, if described appropriately, do not explain the presently observed accelerated expansion of the Universe. Also, we show that, in constrast to the mathematical fluid models widely used before, the radiative fluid does approach local thermal equilibrium at late times, although very slowly, due to the cosmological expansion.