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Cosmology and Brane Worlds: A Review
Cosmological consequences of the brane world scenario are reviewed in a
pedagogical manner. According to the brane world idea, the standard model
particles are confined on a hyper--surface (a so--called brane), which is
embedded in a higher--dimensional spacetime (the so--called bulk). We begin our
review with the simplest consistent brane world model: a single brane embedded
in a five--dimensional Anti-de Sitter space--time. Then we include a scalar
field in the bulk and discuss in detail the difference with the Anti-de Sitter
case. The geometry of the bulk space--time is also analysed in some depth.
Finally, we investigate the cosmology of a system with two branes and a bulk
scalar field. We comment on brane collisions and summarize some open problems
of brane world cosmology.Comment: 37 pages; invited topical review for Classical and Quantum Gravity;
to appea