Inflation and brane gases

We investigate a new way of realizing a period of cosmological inflation in the context of brane gas cosmology. It is argued that a gas of codimension one branes, out of thermal equilibrium with the rest of the matter, has an equation of state which can-after stabilization of the dilaton-lead to power-law inflation of the bulk. The most promising implementation of this mechanism might be in type IIB superstring theory, with inflation of the three large spatial dimensions triggered by "stabilized embedded 2-branes." Possible applications and problems with this proposal are discussed.