Brane-world inflation and the transition to standard cosmology

Journal article

In the context of a five-dimensional brane-world model motivated from heterotic M-theory, we develop a framework for potential-driven brane-world inflation. Specifically this involves a classification of the various background solutions of (A)dS5 type, an analysis of five-dimensional slow-roll conditions and a study of how a transition to the flat vacuum state can be realized. It is shown that solutions with bulk potential and both brane potentials positive exist but are always non-separating and have a non-static orbifold. It turns out that, for this class of backgrounds, a transition to the flat vacuum state during inflation is effectively prevented by the rapidly expanding orbifold. We demonstrate that such a transition can be realized for solutions where one boundary potential is negative. For this case, we present two concrete inflationary models which exhibit the transition explicitly.

Authors: Lukas, A; Skinner, D

• Journal: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 9
• Publication date: 2001-01-01
• ISSN: 1029-8479
• Language: English
• Keywords: Extra Large Dimensions; Cosmology of Theories beyond the SM; M-Theory