Kaluza-Klein cosmologies and inflation

Abstract

We study the cosmology of Kaluza-Klein models and discuss the possibility of obtaining large amounts of inflation. The exponent that occurs in the inflation factor is simply related to the number of "extra" dimensions. The number of dimensions should therefore be large (\ensuremath{\sim}40). Quantumgravity effects are important if the inflation is substantial. However, the appearance of inflation follows simply from thermodynamic considerations.