Dynamical Compactification, Standard Cosmology and the Accelerating Universe

Abstract

A cosmological model based on Kaluza-Klein theory is studied. A metric, in which the scale factor of the compact space evolves as an inverse power of the radius of the observable universe, is constructed. The Freedmann-Robertson-Walker equations of standard four-dimensional cosmology are obtained precisely. The pressure in our universe is an effective pressure expressed in terms of the components of the higher dimensional energy-momentum tensor. In particular, this effective pressure could be negative and might therefore explain the acceleration of our present universe. A special feature of this model is that, for a suitable choice of the parameters of the metric, the higher dimensional gravitational coupling constant could be negative.