Periodic boundary conditions and G₂ cosmology

In the standard concordance cosmology the spatial curvature is assumed to be constant and zero (or at least very small). In particular, in numerical computations of the structure of the universe using N-body simulations, exact periodic boundary conditions are assumed which constrains the spatial curvature. In order to confirm this qualitatively, we numerically evolve a special class of spatially inhomogeneous $G_2$ models with both periodic initial data and non periodic initial data using zooming techniques. We consequently demonstrate that in these models periodic initial conditions do indeed suppress the growth of the spatial curvature as the models evolve away from their initial isotropic and spatially homogeneous state, thereby verifying that the spatial curvature is necessarily very small in standard cosmology.