Inflation from geometrical tachyons

We propose an alternative formulation of tachyon inflation using the geometrical tachyon arising from the time dependent motion of a BPS $D3$-brane in the background geometry due to $k$ parallel $NS$5-branes arranged around a ring of radius $R$. Because of the fact that the mass of this geometrical tachyon field is $\sqrt{2/k}$ times smaller than the corresponding open-string tachyon mass, we find that the slow-roll conditions for inflation and the number of e-foldings can be satisfied in a manner that is consistent with an effective 4-dimensional model and with a perturbative string coupling. We also show that the metric perturbations produced at the end of inflation can be sufficiently small and do not lead to the inconsistencies that plague the open-string tachyon models. Finally we argue for the existence of a minimum of the geometrical tachyon potential which could give rise to a traditional reheating mechanism.