Braneworld Research Articles

BPS brane cosmology in \U0001d4a9 = 2 supergravity

We study the embedding of flat BPS three-branes in five-dimensional supergravity theory. We derive the branes’ dynamical equations as well as general expressions for the hypermultiplet fields then focus on a single brane and study its time evolution. It is shown that the brane’s Hubble parameter correlates with the moduli of the underlying manifold’s complex structure. For certain particular solutions, the moduli seem to exhibit an instability, being large valued at early times then rapidly decaying to either zero or some convergent constant value. The possibility of extending these results to the cosmology of our Universe is implied and briefly discussed. Our results are in line with the production and decay of heavy moduli in the early Universe, as is currently believed in the literature.

Metric factorizability and equivalence of brane world models with Brans-Dicke theory

In the standard brane world models, the bulk metric ansatz is usually assumed to be factorizable in brane and bulk coordinates. However, it is not self-evident that it is always possible to factorize the bulk metric. Using the gradient expansion scheme, which involves the expansion of bulk quantities in terms of the brane-to-bulk curvature ratio as a perturbative parameter, we explicitly show that metric factorizability is a valid assumption up to second order in the perturbative expansion. We also argue from our result that the same should be true for all orders in the perturbation scheme. We further establish that the nonlocal terms present in the bulk gravitational field equation can be replaced by the radion field; the effective action on the brane thereby obtained resembles the Brans-Dicke theory of gravity.

Possible geometrical origin of the accelerated expansion of the Universe

The modified geodetic brane cosmology (MGBC) is tested with observational data. The MGBC is derived from the geodetic brane gravity action corrected by the extrinsic curvature of the braneworld. The density parameter coming from this additional term produces an accelerated expansion of geometrical origin. Subject to the Supernovae Ia, Observable Hubble parameter, Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and Cosmic Microwave Background probes, the obtained fit provides enough evidence in the sense that the extrinsic curvature effect is able to reproduce the accelerated expansion of the universe without need of invoking dark energy, exotic matter or cosmological constant. Moreover the MGBC is free of the problems present in other braneworld models.

Stellar models in brane worlds

We consider here a full study of stellar dynamics from the brane-world point of view in the case of constant density and of a polytropic fluid. We start our study cataloguing the minimal requirements to obtain a compact object with a Schwarszchild exterior, highlighting the low and high energy limit, the boundary conditions, and the appropriate behavior of Weyl contributions inside and outside of the star. Under the previous requirements we show an extensive study of stellar behavior, starting with stars of constant density and its extended cases with the presence of nonlocal contributions. Finally, we focus our attention to more realistic stars with a polytropic equation of state, specially in the case of white dwarfs, and study their static configurations numerically. One of the main results is that the inclusion of the Weyl functions from braneworld models allow the existence of more compact configurations than within General Relativity.

Point particle motion in topologically nontrivial spacetimes

It is well known that compactifying a space can break symmetries that are present in the covering space. In this paper we study the effects of such topological symmetry breaking on point particle motion when the particle is coupled to a massless field on the space. For a torus topology where Lorentz invariance is broken but translation invariance is maintained, particles can move at a constant velocity through the space; however, nonlocal, velocity-dependent forces arise whenever the particle is accelerated. For a topology where translation invariance is broken, such as the Klein bottle, interactions with the massless field generate an effective potential as a function of position. The potential creates special stable points in the space, and prevents constant velocity motion. The latter would appear to be the generic case. This class of effects may be applicable whenever a localized object moves through a compactified bulk, such as in brane-world cosmology, or some condensed matter systems.

2-branes with Arnold-Beltrami fluxes from minimal D=7 supergravity

We describe this paper as a Sentimental Journey from Hydrodynamics to Supergravity. Beltrami equation in three dimensions that plays a key role in the hydrodynamics of incompressible fluids has an unsuspected relation with minimal supergravity in seven dimensions. We show that just D=7 supergravity and no other theory with the same field content but different coefficients in the lagrangian, admits exact two-brane solutions where Arnold-Beltrami fluxes in the transverse directions have been switched on. The rich variety of discrete groups that classify the solutions of Beltrami equation, namely the eigenfunctions of the *d operator on a three-torus, are by this newly discovered token injected into the brane world. A new quite extensive playing ground opens up for supergravity and for its dual gauge theories in three dimensions, where all classical fields and all quantum composite operators will be assigned to irreducible representations of discrete crystallographic groups.

Brane cosmology in teleparallel and f (T ) gravity

We consider the cosmology of a brane-world scenario in the framework of teleparallel and f(T) gravity in a way that matter is localized on the brane. We show that the cosmology of such branes is different from the standard cosmology in teleparallelism. In particular, we obtain a class of new solutions with a constant five-dimensional radius and cosmologically evolving brane in the context of constant torsion f(T) gravity.

Cosmological tests of coupled Galileons

We investigate the cosmological properties of Galileon models which admit Minkowski space as a stable solution in vacuum. This is motivated by stable, positive tension brane world constructions that give rise to Galileons. We include both conformal and disformal couplings to matter and focus on constraints on the theory that arise because of these couplings. The disformal coupling to baryonic matter is extremely constrained by astrophysical and particle physics effects. The disformal coupling to photons induces a cosmological variation of the speed of light and therefore distorsions of the Cosmic Microwave Background spectrum which are known to be very small. The conformal coupling to baryons leads to a variation of particle masses since Big Bang Nucleosynthesis which is also tightly constrained. We consider the background cosmology of Galileon models coupled to Cold Dark Matter (CDM), photons and baryons and impose that the speed of light and particle masses respect the observational bounds on cosmological time scales. We find that requiring that the equation of state for the Galileon models must be close to -1 now restricts severely their parameter space and can only be achieved with a combination of the conformal and disformal couplings. This leads to large variations of particle masses and the speed of light which are not compatible with observations. As a result, we find that cosmological Galileon models are viable dark energy theories coupled to dark matter but their couplings, both disformal and conformal, to baryons and photons must be heavily suppressed making them only sensitive to CDM.

Dynamical systems analysis of an interacting dark energy model in the brane scenario

In this paper, we investigate the background dynamics in brane cosmology when dark energy is coupled to dark matter by a suitable interaction. Here we consider an homogeneous and isotropic Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) brane model and the evolution equations are reduced to an autonomous system by suitable transformation of variables. The nature of critical points are analyzed by evaluating the eigenvalues of linearized Jacobi matrix. Finally, the classical stability of the model is also studied.

Brane worlds in gravity with auxiliary fields

Recently, Pani et al. explored a new theory of gravity by adding nondynamical fields, i.e., gravity with auxiliary fields (Phys Rev D 88:121502, 2013). In this gravity theory, higher-order derivatives of matter fields generically appear in the field equations. In this paper we extend this theory to any dimensions and discuss the thick braneworld model in five dimensions. Domain wall solutions are obtained numerically. The stability of the brane system under tensor perturbations is analyzed. We find that the system is stable under tensor perturbations and the gravity zero mode is localized on the brane. Therefore, the four-dimensional Newtonian potential can be realized on the brane.

Dark matter relic density in Gauss-Bonnet braneworld cosmology

The relic density of symmetric and asymmetric dark matter in a Gauss-Bonnet (GB) modified Randall-Sundrum (RS) type II braneworld cosmology is investigated. The existing study of symmetric dark matter in a GB braneworld (Okada and Okada, 2009) found that the expansion rate was reduced compared to that in standard General Relativity (GR), thereby delaying particle freeze-out and resulting in relic abundances which are suppressed by up to \U0001d4aa(10−2). This is in direct contrast to the behaviour observed in RS braneworlds where the expansion rate is enhanced and the final relic abundance boosted. However, this finding that relic abundances are suppressed in a GB braneworld is based upon a highly contrived situation in which the GB era evolves directly into a standard GR era, rather than passing through a RS era as is the general situation. This collapse of the RS era requires equating the mass scale mα of the GB modification and the mass scale mσ of the brane tension. However, if the GB contribution is to be considered as the lowest order correction from string theory to the RS action, we would expect mα > mσ. We investigate the effect upon the relic abundance of choosing more realistic values for the ratio ℛm ≡ mα/mσ and find that the relic abundance can be either enhanced or suppressed by more than two orders of magnitude. However, suppression only occurs for a small range of parameter choices and, overwhelmingly, the predominant situation is that of enhancement as we recover the usual Randall-Sundrum type behaviour in the limit ℛm ≫ 1. We use the latest observational bound ΩDMh2 = 0.1187 ± 0.0017 to constrain the various model parameters and briefly discuss the implications for direct/indirect dark matter detection experiments as well as dark matter particle models.

Warped brane worlds in critical gravity

We investigate the brane models in arbitrary dimensional critical gravity presented in Lu and Pope (Phys Rev Lett 106:181302, 2011). For the models of the thin branes with codimension one, the Gibbons–Hawking surface term and the junction conditions are derived, with which the analytical solutions for the flat, AdS, and dS branes are obtained at the critical point of the critical gravity. It is found that all these branes are embedded in an AdS $$_{n}$$ spacetime, but, in general, the effective cosmological constant $$\varLambda $$ of the AdS $$_{n}$$ spacetime is not equal to the naked one $$\varLambda _0$$ in the critical gravity, which can be positive, zero, and negative. Another interesting result is that the brane tension can also be positive, zero, or negative, depending on the symmetry of the thin brane and the values of the parameters of the theory, which is very different from the case in general relativity. It is shown that the mass hierarchy problem can be solved in the braneworld model in the higher-derivative critical gravity. We also study the thick brane model and find analytical and numerical solutions of the flat, AdS, and dS branes. It is found that some branes will have inner structure when some parameters of the theory are larger than their critical values, which may result in resonant KK modes for some bulk matter fields. The flat branes with positive energy density and AdS branes with negative energy density are embedded in an $$n$$ -dimensional AdS spacetime, while the dS branes with positive energy density are embedded in an $$n$$ -dimensional Minkowski one.

Higgs boson-radion similarity in production processes involving off-shell fermions

The appearance of the radion field, which is associated with the spin-0 metric fluctuations combined in some manner with the scalar stabilizing field, and of the radion, the corresponding lowest Kaluza-Klein (KK) mode, is a generic prediction of stabilized brane world models. In such models the radion plays the role of the dilaton, and its mass may be somewhat smaller than that of all the KK modes of other particles propagating in the multidimensional bulk. Due to its origin, the radion couples to the trace of the energy-momentum tensor of the Standard Model, the interaction Lagrangian of the radion and the Standard Model fermions being similar to that of the SM Higgs-fermion interactions except for additional terms, which come into play only in the case of off-shell fermions. In the present paper it is shown that all the contributions to perturbative amplitudes of physical processes due to these additional terms are canceled out for both massless and massive off-shell fermions. Thus the additional fermion-radion terms in the interaction Lagrangian do not alter any production and decay properties of the radion compared to those of the Higgs boson.

Brane-world and loop cosmology from a gravity–matter coupling perspective

We show that the effective brane-world and the loop quantum cosmology background expansion histories can be reproduced from a modified gravity perspective in terms of an f(R) gravity action plus a g(R) term non-minimally coupled with the matter Lagrangian. The reconstruction algorithm that we provide depends on a free function of the matter density that must be specified in each case and allows to obtain analytical solutions always. In the simplest cases, the function f(R) is quadratic in the Ricci scalar, R, whereas g(R) is linear. Our approach is compared with recent results in the literature. We show that working in the Palatini formalism there is no need to impose any constraint that keeps the equations second-order, which is a key requirement for the successful implementation of the reconstruction algorithm.

Stellar Stability in the Braneworld

We study the properties of astrophysical systems in a Brane World scenario. In particular, the consequences of local terms that emerge from extra-dimensional gravity are explored through the modified Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equation. We compute the induced changes into mass, density and compactness of objects like white dwarfs and neutron stars. The main corrections in comparison with the known results of General Relativity are given in terms of the ratio ρ0/λ, where ρ0 is the central energy density of the stellar distribution and λ is the brane tension. As a result of these modifications, We obtain that the compactness of both, neutron stars and white dwarf decreases with respect to the value of General Relativity.

On the Hamiltonian structure of the (n + 2)-dimensional geometrodynamics

The Hamiltonian structure of the (n + 2)-dimensional gravity is presented by applying an (n + 1 + 1)-decomposition of the underlying manifold geometry. The phase space and the global symplectic structure is defined for the gravitational field, and its Hamiltonian equations and constraints are rephrased in the compact form of the -adjoint formalism, which provides a useful theoretical framework for the study of linearization stability and the independent gravitational degrees of freedom in brane world cosmology.

On the extra force in brane world scenario

In the study of the dynamics in a 5D bulk from brane world scenario, an extra force with abnormal properties was detected (cf. [D. Youm, Extra force in brane worlds, Phys. Rev. D62 (2000) 084002; D. Youm, Null geodesics in brane world universe, Mod. Phys. Lett. A16 (2001) 2371; L. F. Zhang and Y. Z. Zhang, Null geodesics in brane world scenarios, Commun. Theor. Phys. (Beijing)41 (2004) 48]). In this paper, by using the Riemannian horizontal connection introduced in [A. Bejancu, A new point of view on general Kaluza–Klein theories, Progr. Theor. Phys.128 (2012) 541], we give a new definition for the extra force in a 5D bulk, and show that it does not contradict the 4D physics. In particular, we show that this force appears very rarely along geodesics in a warped 5D bulk.

D-flation

In a recent paper we showed how Starobinsky-like inflation could emerge from dilaton dynamics in brane cosmology scenarios based on string theory, in which our universe is represented as a three-brane and the effective potential acquires a constant term from a density of effectively point-like non-perturbative defects on the brane: ``D-particles''. Here we explore how quantum fluctuations of the ensemble of D-particles during the inflationary period may modify the effective inflationary potential due to the dilaton. We then discuss two specific ways in which an enhanced ratio of tensor to scalar perturbations may arise: via either a condensate of vector fields with a Born-Infeld action that may be due to such recoil fluctuations, or graviton production in the D-particle vacuum.

Cosmological solutions and observational constraints on five-dimensional braneworld cosmology with gravitating Nambu-Goto matching conditions

We investigate the cosmological implications of the recently constructed 5-dimensional braneworld cosmology with gravitating Nambu-Goto matching conditions. Inserting both matter and radiation sectors, we first extract the analytical cosmological solutions. Additionally, we use observational data from Type Ia Supernovae (SNIa) and Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO), along with requirements of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), in order to impose constraints on the parameters of the model. We find that the scenario at hand is in very good agreement with observations, and thus a small departure from the standard Randall-Sundrum scenario is allowed.

Probe brane dynamics on cosmological brane backgrounds

We consider the dynamics of a single probe brane on various cosmological brane backgrounds. The on-shell condition of the static probe brane leads to the supersymmetric intersection rules for static BPS configurations, though the cosmological backgrounds do not preserve any supersymmetries. This is a remarkable feature associated with the cosmological backgrounds because in the static background the on-shell condition of the static brane gives no constraint on the brane configuration. Furthermore, it follows that under this condition there is no velocity-independent force for the probe brane even on the cosmological backgrounds.