Massive Gravity in Extra Dimensions

Abstract

We discuss a Brane World scenario where we live on a 3-brane with massive gravity in infinite-volume bulk. The bulk graviton can be much heavier than the inverse Hubble size, as heavy as the bulk Planck scale, whose lower bound is roughly the inverse of 0.1 mm. The 4D Einstein-Hilbert term on the brane shields the brane matter from both strong bulk gravity and large bulk graviton mass. Gravity on the brane does not become higher-dimensional at large distances. Instead, at distance scales above the bulk Planck length, gravity on the brane behaves as 4D gravity with small graviton mass roughly of order or below the inverse Hubble size. Unlike the massless case, with massive gravity in the bulk one can have: i) 4D tensor structure on a codimension-1 brane; and ii) no infrared tachyon for smoothed-out higher codimension branes. The effects of the brane dynamics on the bulk are exponentially suppressed away from the brane. One consequence is that there are no "self-accelerated" solutions. In codimension-2 cases there exist nonsingular solutions with a flat 3-brane for a continuous positive range of the brane tension. In higher codimension cases, as in the massless case, higher curvature terms are required to obtain such solutions.