Inspired by the Randall-Sundrum brane-world scenario, we investigate the possibility of brane-world inflation driven not by an inflaton field on the brane, but by a bulk, dilaton-like gravitational field. As a toy model for the dilaton-like gravitational field, we consider a minimally coupled massive scalar field in the bulk five-dimensional space-time, and look for a perturbative solution in the anti–de Sitter (AdS) background. For an adequate range of the scalar field mass, we find a unique solution that has a nontrivial dependence on the fifth dimensional coordinate, and that induces slow-roll inflation on the brane.

• Received 11 October 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.63.044015