Extranatural inflation

We present a new model of inflation in which the inflaton is the extra component of a gauge field in a 5D theory compactified on a circle. The chief merit of this model is that the potential comes only from nonlocal effects so that its flatness is not spoiled by higher-dimensional operators or quantum gravity corrections. The model predicts a red spectrum (n approximately 0.96) and a significant production of gravitational waves (r approximately 0.11). We also comment on the relevance of this idea to quintessence.