Inflation in Higher Dimensional Gauss-Bonnet Cosmology

Understand

A Gauss-Bonnet term naturally appears in the action for gravity when one considers the existence of space time with dimensions more than 1+3.

• A variety of inflationary models can be obtained within such a framework, once the scale factor for the hidden dimension(s) is not constrained to be the same as that of the visible ones.
• In particular, the need for an adhoc inflaton field is eliminated.
• The phase space has a rich structure with different types of solutions, both stable and unstable.