Universe driven by a perfect fluid in Eddington-inspired Born-Infeld gravity

We investigate the evolution of the Universe filled with barotropic perfect fluid in Eddington-inspired Born-Infeld gravity. We consider both the isotropic and the anisotropic universe. At the early stage when the energy density is high, the evolution is modified considerably compared with that in general relativity. For the equation-of-state parameter w>0, the initial singularity is not accompanied as it was discovered for radiation in earlier work. More interestingly, for pressureless dust (w=0), the initial state approaches a de Sitter state. This fact opens a new possibility of the singularity-free nature of the theory. The anisotropy is mild, and does not develop curvature singularities in spacetime contrary to general relativity.