Cosmology with Branes Wrapping Curved Internal Manifolds

Abstract

In this paper we first derive solutions which can be interpreted as branes wrapping nontrivial curved manifolds, and then study their cosmological implications. We find that at early times the branes tend to shrink the internal manifold, while allowing the ``unwrapped'' dimensions to expand in congruence with what has already been observed in the case when the internal manifold is flat (tori). However, at late times the internal curvature terms become important leading to potentially interesting differences.

Minor changes, the journal version, a few references added