Inhomogeneous Einstein-Rosen string cosmology

Families of anisotropic and inhomogeneous string cosmologies containing non-trivial dilaton and axion fields are derived by applying the global symmetries of the string effective action to a generalized Einstein-Rosen metric. The models exhibit a two-dimensional group of Abelian isometries. In particular, two classes of exact solutions are found that represent inhomogeneous generalizations of the Bianchi type ${\mathrm{VI}}_h$ cosmology. The asymptotic behavior of the solutions is investigated and further applications are briefly discussed.