Quantum cosmology in an anisotropic n-dimensional universe

Abstract

We investigate quantum cosmological models in an n-dimensional anisotropic universe in the presence of a massless scalar field. Our basic inspiration comes from Chodos and Detweiler's classical model which predicts an interesting behaviour of the extra dimension, shrinking down as time goes by. We work in the framework of a recent geometrical scalar-tensor theory of gravity. Classically, we obtain two distinct type of solutions. One of them has an initial singularity while the other represents a static universe considered as a whole. By using the canonical approach to quantum cosmology, we investigate how quantum effects could have had an influence in the past history of these universes.