Conformal p-branes as a Source of Structure in Spacetime

Abstract

We discuss a model of a conformal p-brane interacting with the world volume metric and connection. The purpose of the model is to suggest a mechanism by which gravity coupled to p-branes leads to the formation of structure rather than homogeneity in spacetime. Furthermore, we show that the formation of structure is accompanied by the appearance of a multivalued cosmological constant, i.e., one which may take on different values in different domains, or cells, of spacetime. The above results apply to a broad class of non linear gravitational lagrangians as long as metric and connection on the p-brane manifold are treated as independent variables.

10 pages, ReVTeX, no figures

References in corpus (3)

• Affine Strings
• Postmodern String Theory: Stochastic Formulation
• Membrane Pregeometry and the Vanishing of the Cosmological Constant

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Nonlinear Realization of N=2 Superconformal Symmetry and Brane Effective Actions
• Dynamics of Weyl Scale Invariant non-BPS p=3 Branes