GENERALIZED SINGULARITY-FREE COSMOLOGICAL MODEL IN 5 DIMENSIONS

An explicit general family of cylindrically symmetric inhomogeneous co smological models in five-dimensional spacetime is presented. Some of these solutions, which already exist in the literature, are nonsingula r and satisfy a baryotropic equation of state including the case for v acuum also. By particular choices of parameters it is possible to iden tify those particular solutions which in the course of time exhibit di mensional reduction. This general family of model contains a large cla ss of singular solutions as well. The interesting feature of this fami ly is that, as in the four-dimensional case, it can give us the isotro pic homogeneous spacetime similar to the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson- Walker model by the appropriate selection of the parameters in the met ric. [S0556-2821(97)05222-3].