Self-Tuning at Large (Distances): 4D Description of Runaway Dilaton Capture

Abstract

We complete here a three-part study (see also arXiv:1506.08095 and 1508.00856) of how codimension-two objects back-react gravitationally with their environment, with particular interest in situations where the transverse `bulk' is stabilized by the interplay between gravity and flux-quantization in a dilaton-Maxwell-Einstein system such as commonly appears in higher-dimensional supergravity and is used in the Supersymmetric Large Extra Dimensions (SLED) program. Such systems enjoy a classical flat direction that can be lifted by interactions with the branes, giving a mass to the would-be modulus that is smaller than the KK scale. We construct the effective low-energy 4D description appropriate below the KK scale once the transverse extra dimensions are integrated out, and show that it reproduces the predictions of the full UV theory for how the vacuum energy and modulus mass depend on the properties of the branes and stabilizing fluxes. In particular we show how this 4D theory learns the news of flux quantization through the existence of a space-filling four-form potential that descends from the higher-dimensional Maxwell field. We find a scalar potential consistent with general constraints, like the runaway dictated by Weinberg's theorem. We show how scale-breaking brane interactions can give this potential minima for which the extra-dimensional size, $\ell$, is exponentially large relative to underlying physics scales, $r_B$, with ${\ell }^2=r_B^2{e}^{-\phi }$ where $-\phi \gg 1$ can be arranged with a small hierarchy between fundamental parameters. We identify circumstances where the potential at the minimum can (but need not) be parametrically suppressed relative to the tensions of the branes, provide a preliminary discussion of the robustness of these results to quantum corrections, and discuss the relation between what we find and earlier papers in the SLED program.

37 pages + appendices

References in corpus (10)

• The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment
• Lectures on the Cosmological Constant Problem
• Large Dimensions and Small Curvatures from Supersymmetric Brane Back-reaction
• Bulk Axions, Brane Back-reaction and Fluxes
• Supersymmetry Breaking and the Cosmological Constant
• Instability of brane cosmological solutions with flux compactifications
• Braneworld localisation in hyperbolic spacetime
• Fine-tuning with Brane-Localized Flux in 6D Supergravity
• Distributed SUSY Breaking: Dark Energy, Newton's Law and the LHC
• The Gravity of Dark Vortices: Effective Field Theory for Branes and Strings Carrying Localized Flux

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Fine-tuning with Brane-Localized Flux in 6D Supergravity
• The Gravity of Dark Vortices: Effective Field Theory for Branes and Strings Carrying Localized Flux