Brane-world inflation and the transition to standard cosmology

In the context of a five-dimensional brane-world model motivated fromheterotic M-theory, we develop a framework for potential-driven brane-worldinflation. Specifically this involves a classification of the variousbackground solutions of (A)dS_5 type, an analysis of five-dimensional slow-rollconditions and a study of how a transition to the flat vacuum state can berealized. It is shown that solutions with bulk potential and both banepotentials positive exist but are always non-separating and have a non-staticorbifold. It turns out that, for this class of backgrounds, a transition to theflat vacuum state during inflation is effectively prevented by the rapidlyexpanding orbifold. We demonstrate that such a transition can be realized forsolutions where one boundary potential is negative. For this case, we presenttwo concrete inflationary models which exhibit the transition explicitly.Comment: 50 pages, 3 figures, minor typos correcte