Mass hierarchy, mass gap and corrections to Newton’s law on thick branes with Poincaré symmetry

We consider a scalar thick brane configuration arising in a 5D theory of gravity coupled to a self-interacting scalar field in a Riemannian manifold. We start from known classical solutions of the corresponding field equations and elaborate on the physics of the transverse traceless modes of linear fluctuations of the classical background, which obey a Schrödinger-like equation. We further consider two special cases in which this equation can be solved analytically for any massive mode with $m^2\ge 0$ , in contrast with numerical approaches, allowing us to study in closed form the massive spectrum of Kaluza–Klein (KK) excitations and to analytically compute the corrections to Newton’s law in the thin brane limit. In the first case we consider a novel solution with a mass gap in the spectrum of KK fluctuations with two bound states—the massless 4D graviton free of tachyonic instabilities and a massive KK excitation—as well as a tower of continuous massive KK modes which obey a Legendre equation. The mass gap is defined by the inverse of the brane thickness, allowing us to get rid of the potentially dangerous multiplicity of arbitrarily light KK modes. It is shown that due to this lucky circumstance, the solution of the mass hierarchy problem is much simpler and transparent than in the thin Randall–Sundrum (RS) two-brane configuration. In the second case we present a smooth version of the RS model with a single massless bound state, which accounts for the 4D graviton, and a sector of continuous fluctuation modes with no mass gap, which obey a confluent Heun equation in the Ince limit. (The latter seems to have physical applications for the first time within braneworld models). For this solution the mass hierarchy problem is solved with positive branes as in the Lykken–Randall (LR) model and the model is completely free of naked singularities. We also show that the scalar–tensor system is stable under scalar perturbations with no scalar modes localized on the braneworld configuration.     

Letter: O(d + 1, d + n + 1)-Invariant Formulation of Stationary Heterotic String Theory

We present a pair of symmetric formulations of the matter sector of the stationary effective action of heterotic string theory that arises after the toroidal compactification of d dimensions. The first formulation is written in terms of a pair of matrix potentials Z ₁ and Z ₂ which exhibits a clear symmetry between them and can be used to generate new families of solutions on the basis of either Z ₁ or Z ₂; the second one is an O(d + 1, d + n + 1)-invariant formulation which is written in terms of a matrix vector W endowed with an O(d + 1, d + n + 1)-invariant scalar product which linearizes the action of the O(d + 1, d + n + 1)symmetry group on the coset space O(d + 1, d + n + 1)/[O(d + 1) × O(d + n + 1)]; this fact opens as well a simple solution-generating technique which can be applied on the basis of known solutions.