Abstract

We investigate the possibility of inducing the cosmological constant from extra dimensions by embedding our four-dimensional Riemannian space-time into a five-dimensional Weyl integrable space. Following the approach of the space-time-matter theory we show that when we go down from five to four dimensions, the Weyl field may contribute both to the induced energy-tensor as well as to the cosmological constant Λ, or more generally, it may generate a time-dependent cosmological parameter Λ(t). As an application, we construct a simple cosmological model in which Λ(t) has some interesting properties