Anisotropic inflation in a 5D standing wave braneworld and effective dimensional reduction

We investigate a cosmological solution within the framework of a 5D standing wave braneworld model generated by gravity coupled to a massless scalar phantom-like field. By obtaining a full exact solution of the model we found a novel dynamical mechanism in which the anisotropic nature of the primordial metric gives rise to (i) inflation along certain spatial dimensions, and (ii) deflation and a shrinking reduction of the number of spatial dimensions along other directions. This dynamical mechanism can be relevant for dimensional reduction in string and other higher-dimensional theories in the attempt of getting a 4D isotropic expanding space-time.