6533b85dfe1ef96bd12bf133

RESEARCH PRODUCT

The Einstein field equation in a multidimensional universe

subject

description

String theory [4] predicts that the universe has 10 or 26 dimensions. A salient problem is how the Einstein field equation should be written in terms of these revivified Kaluza-Klein cosmologies. The answer is by now well-known, yet nobody seems to have rewritten the seminal computation in [6] where an unnecessarily involved Euler-Lagrange variational method is employed and, curiously enough, no allusion to the Gauss-Bonnet-Chern theorem is made. We provide a more straightforward argument, which has been inspired by Hilbert's original derivation of the Einstein field equation [5].