Induced cosmological constant in braneworlds with warped internal spaces

Abstract

We investigate the vacuum energy density induced by quantum fluctuations of a bulk scalar field with general curvature coupling parameter on two codimension one parallel branes in a $(D+1)$-dimensional background spacetime ${\mathrm{AdS}}_{D1+1}\times Σ$ with a warped internal space $Σ$. It is assumed that on the branes the field obeys Robin boundary conditions. Using the generalized zeta function technique in combination with contour integral representations, the surface energies on the branes are presented in the form of the sums of single brane and second brane induced parts. For the geometry of a single brane both regions, on the left (L-region) and on the right (R-region), of the brane are considered. The surface densities for separate L- and R-regions contain pole and finite contributions. For an infinitely thin brane taking these regions together, in odd spatial dimensions the pole parts cancel and the total surface energy is finite. The parts in the surface densities generated by the presence of the second brane are finite for all nonzero values of the interbrane separation. The contribution of the Kaluza-Klein modes along $Σ$ is investigated in various limiting cases. It is shown that for large distances between the branes the induced surface densities give rise to an exponentially suppressed cosmological constant on the brane. In the higher dimensional generalization of the Randall-Sundrum braneworld model, for the interbrane distances solving the hierarchy problem, the cosmological constant generated on the visible brane is of the right order of magnitude with the value suggested by the cosmological observations.