On gravity localization in scalar braneworlds with a super-exponential warp factor

TL;DR

This paper investigates the issues with super-exponential warp factors in tachyonic braneworld models, showing they lead to non-localized gravity and complex tachyon fields, unlike canonical scalar field models which avoid these problems.

Contribution

It demonstrates the incompatibility of super-exponential warp factors with real tachyon fields and gravity localization, and compares this with canonical scalar field models that do not face these issues.

Findings

Super-exponential warp factors cause the tachyon field to become complex.

Gravity localization fails with super-exponential warp factors in tachyonic models.

Canonical scalar fields do not exhibit these localization problems.

Abstract

We show that within tachyonic braneworld models,"super-exponential" warp factors of the form $e^{-2f} \sim e^{-2c_1e^{c_2 |\sigma|}}$ are problematic when dealing with both the finiteness of the effective four-dimensional (4d) Planck mass and the localization of 4d gravity, which can be stated by the requirement that $\int e^{-2f(\sigma)}d\sigma < \infty$, because this condition necessarily implies that c_1 and c_2 should be positive. As a consequence of this fact the tachyonic field $T$ turns out to be complex in contradiction with the real nature of the starting action for the tachyonic braneworld. Conversely if one requires to have a real tachyon field, 4d gravity will not be localized and the effective gravitational coupling will be infinite. We present several typical examples where this problem occurs: we have analysed this situation for thin as well as thick tachyonic braneworlds with 4d Poincare symmetry, for the case when a bulk cosmological constant is present, and even for a brane with an induced spatially flat 4d cosmological background, and shown that in all cases the tachyon field T comes out to be inconsistently complex when imposing localization of 4d gravity. On the other hand, when dealing with a further reduction of the hierarchy problem one should carefully consider the sign of the constants c_1 and c_2 to avoid inconsistencies in the tachyonic braneworld model. We also present a similar discusion involving a canonical scalar field in the bulk where none of these problems arise and hence, the mass hierarchy and 4d gravity localization problems can be successfully addressed at once. Finally, the stability analysis of this scalar tensor braneworld model with a super-exponential warp factor is performed.