Brane Inflation Research Articles

Brane inflation in tachyonic and nontachyonic type 0B string theories

We consider the motion of the brane universe moving in a background bulk space of tachyonic and nontachyonic type 0B string theory. The effective densities are calculated for both cases and they show different power law behavior. Brane inflation for a nontachyonic type 0B background has the same power law behavior as that for a type IIB background. The brane inflation under a tachyonic background is less divergent than one without a tachyon. The role of the tachyonic field in the brane inflation scenario is different from that of the ordinary matter field.

Radion on the de Sitter Brane

The radion on the de Sitter brane is investigated at the linear perturbation level, using the covariant curvature tensor formalism developed by Shiromizu, Maeda and Sasaki. It is found that if there is only one de Sitter brane with positive tension, there is no radion and thus the ordinary Einstein gravity is recoverd on the brane other than corrections due to the massive Kaluza-Klein modes. As a by-product of using the covariant curvature tensor formalism, it is immediately seen that the cosmological scalar, vector and tensor type perturbations all have the same Kaluza-Klein spectrum. On the other hand, if there are two branes with positive and negative tensions, the gravity on each brane takes corrections from the radion mode in addition to the Kaluza-Klein modes and the radion is found to have a negative mass-squared proportional to the curvature of the de Sitter brane, in contrast to the flat brane case in which the radion mass vanishes and degenerates with the 4-dimensional graviton modes. To relate our result with the metric perturbation approach, we derive the second order action for the brane displacement. We find that the radion identified in our approach indeed corresponds to the relative displacement of the branes in the Randall-Sundrum gauge and describes the scalar curvature perturbations of the branes in the gaussian normal coordinates around the branes. Implications to the inflationary brane universe are briefly discussed.

A note on brane inflation

We demonstrate that there exists an inflationary solution on the positive tension brane in the Randall-Sundrum scenario. Inflation is driven by a slow-rolling scalar field on the brane and is achieved within the perturbative limit of the radion field. We find that inflation on the positive tension brane results in a slight increase in the separation between the two branes. However, we show that the slow-roll inflation is not possible on the negative tension brane.

Brane-world cosmology in higher derivative gravity or warped compactification in the next-to-leading order of AdS/CFT correspondence

The general model of higher derivative (HD) gravity is considered. The search of brane-world cosmology in such theory is presented when bulk is d5 AdS and boundary is spherical, hyperbolic or flat (single) brane. It is found the wide range of theory parameters where such cosmology may be realized. Special attention is paid to the version of HD theory representing SG dual of ${\cal N}=2$ $Sp(N)$ SCFT (in next-to-leading order of large $N$ expansion). In particular, it is shown that inflationary brane Universe does not occur for SG dual while hyperbolic brane occurs (which was not possible in leading order). The quantum effects of CFT living on the brane (via the corresponding conformal anomaly induced effective action) may qualitatively change the results of classical analysis. There appears inflationary (or hyperbolic) brane Universe induced by only quantum effects. In AdS/CFT correspondence (next-to-leading order) the addition of such CFT effective action (in some energy region) is naturally explained in terms of holographic renormalization group. It results in the possibility of quantum creation of inflationary brane Universe (with small rate) even for SG dual.

Non-conservation of global charges in the Brane Universe and baryogenesis

We argue that global charges, such as baryon or lepton number, are not conserved in theories with the Standard Model fields localized on the brane which propagates in higher-dimensional space-time. The global-charge non-conservation is due to quantum fluctuations of the brane surface. These fluctuations create “baby branes” that can capture some global charges and carry them away into the bulk of higher-dimensional space. Such processes are exponentially suppressed at low-energies, but can be significant at high enough temperatures or energies. These effects can lead to a new, intrinsically high-dimensional mechanism of baryogenesis. Baryon asymmetry might be produced due either to “evaporation” into the baby branes, or creation of the baryon number excess in collisions of two Brane Universes. As an example we discuss a possible cosmological scenario within the recently proposed “Brane Inflation” framework. Inflation is driven by displaced branes which slowly fall on top of each other. When the branes collide inflation stops and the Brane Universe reheats. During this non-equilibrium collision baryon number can be transported from one brane to another one. This results in the baryon number excess in our Universe which exactly equals to the hidden “baryon number” deficit in the other Brane Universe.

Infrared hierarchy, thermal brane inflation and superstrings as superheavy dark matter

In theories with TeV scale quantum gravity the standard model particles live on a brane propagating in large extra dimensions. Branes may be stabilized at large (sub-millimeter) distances from each other, either due to weak Van der Waals type interactions, or due to an infrared analog of Witten's inverse hierarchy scenario. In particular, this infrared stabilization may be responsible for a large size of extra dimensions. In either case, thermal effects can drive a brief period of the late inflation necessary to avoid the problems with high reheating temperature and the stable unwanted relics. The main reason is that the branes which repel each other at zero temperature can be temporarily glued together by thermal effects. It is crucial that the temperature needed to stabilize branes on top of each other can be much smaller than the potential energy of the bound-state, which drives inflation. After 10–15 e-foldings bound-states cool below the critical temperature and decay ending inflation. The parallel brane worlds get separated at this stage and superstrings (of a sub-millimeter size) get stretched between them. These strings can have the right density in order to serve as a superheavy dark matter.