  We describe cosmological solutions of the holographic dilaton with the aim of
exploring alternatives to the commonly studied thermal Randall-Sundrum phase
transition. It is well known that the thermal transition is typically strongly
first order, with the requirement of a perturbative 5D gravity theory
obstructing completion of the transition. This thermal transition corresponds
to nucleation of an infrared brane through the surface of an AdS-Schwarzschild
horizon. The approach we study instead invokes an early epoch in which the
cosmology is fully 5-dimensional, with highly relativistic brane motion, and
with Rindler horizons obscuring the infrared brane at early times. Our approach
corresponds, via AdS/CFT, to a non-equilibrium approach to the conformal phase
transition. We comment on a class of initial conditions that generically leads
to completion of the phase transition without sacrificing perturbativity of the
5D theory.
