Living on a dS brane: Effects of KK modes on inflation

TL;DR

This paper develops a formalism to analyze higher-dimensional effects in braneworld inflation, revealing enhanced gravitational potential at short wavelengths but minimal impact on observable curvature perturbations.

Contribution

It introduces a new effective theory approach to incorporate KK mode effects in braneworld inflation models, extending previous results.

Findings

Gravitational potential is significantly enhanced at short wavelengths.

Curvature perturbations are weakly affected, with no distinctive signatures on the power spectrum.

Formalism is validated against known Garriga-Tanaka results.

Abstract

We develop a formalism to study non-local higher-dimensional effects in braneworld scenarios from a four-dimensional effective theory point of view and check it against the well-known Garriga-Tanaka result in the appropriate limit. We then use this formalism to study the spectrum of density perturbations during inflation as seen from the lower-dimensional effective theory. In particular, we find that the gravitational potential is greatly enhanced at short wavelengths. The consequences to the curvature perturbations are nonetheless very weak and will lead to no characteristic signatures on the power spectrum.