1987/01/01 by G. W. Gibbons, G.W. Gibbons, D. L. Wiltshire +1 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmological constant #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Massless particle #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum field theory in curved spacetime #Scalar (mathematics) #Space time #Spacetime #Stationary spacetime #Zero mode #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/0550-3213(87)90125-8
published as Nucl.Phys.B287:717,1987 · 30 pages, 4 figures in 10 files, epsf. This early brane world paper is being placed on the archive to make it more easily accessible, as its results are used in a new brane world construction in an accompanying submission
openalex publication_date 1987/01/01 · arxiv created 2001/09/12 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
By means of a simple model we investigate the possibility that spacetime is a membrane embedded in higher dimensions. We present cosmological solutions of d-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell theory which compactify to two dimensions. These solutions are analytically continued to obtain dual solutions in which a (d-2)-dimensional Einstein spacetime "membrane" is embedded in d-dimensions. The membrane solutions generalise Melvin's 4-dimensional flux tube solution. The flat membrane is shown to be classically stable. It is shown that there are zero mode solutions of the d-dimensional Dirac equation which are confined to a neighbourhood of the membrane and move within it like massless chiral (d-2)-dimensional fermions. An investigation of the spectrum of scalar perturbations shows that a well-defined mass gap between the zero modes and massive modes can be obtained if there is a positive cosmological term in (d-2) dimensions or a negative cosmological term in d dimensions.