Branon stabilization from fermion-induced radiative corrections

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that fermion-induced radiative corrections can stabilize an otherwise unstable branon system in a 5D warped space, leading to spontaneous symmetry breaking and a consistent fat brane scenario.

Contribution

It introduces a stabilization mechanism for branons via fermion radiative corrections, highlighting the role of multiple fermion flavors and the fat brane interpretation.

Findings

Fermion loops stabilize the branon effective potential.

Large fermion flavor number is necessary for stabilization.

The fat brane scenario provides a consistent interpretation.

Abstract

We consider a 3-brane embedded in 5-dimensional space time characterized by a Gaussian warp factor, for which the four-dimensional effective theory for brane fluctuation (branons) is unstable. We show that radiative corrections arising from fermions living on the brane, and therefore coupled to branons, stabilize the system by generating dynamically a spontaneous symmetry breaking for the branon field. The price to pay, for the corresponding mechanism to be consistent, is to have a large number of fermion flavours, and we discuss the fat brane scenario as an interpretation for the dressed branon theory, taking into account the Maxwell construction, which avoids the spinodal instability present in the perturbative effective potential.