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# I INTRODUCTION

## I INTRODUCTION

It is believed that in the early universe a series of vacuum phase transitions led to several types of topological defects . Topological defects are relics of the early universe and are expected to convey some information on physics of very high energy scales beyond our reach with ground-based accelerators. On the other hand, topological defects are candidates for the seed of the observed large scale structure of the universe such as sheet-like or filamentary structures or voids. Thus topological defects are attractive examples which connect the high energy physics and cosmology and we might be able to have some information on high energy physics through cosmological observations such as gravitational wave detection in future. Topological defects, if they existed, would interact with other strong gravitational sources such as black holes, and then they might have experienced large deformation and emitted some information on themselves as gravitational waves. If we succeed in detecting such gravitational waves and identifying them, we will be able to confirm the existence of topological defects and hence the occurrence of a vacuum phase transition.

The topological defects with finite extent such as the cosmic string or the domain wall are known to produce an unusual gravitational field  and their dynamics are slightly complicated. There are some studies on the interaction between a cosmic string and a black hole with the hope of detecting gravitational waves from cosmic strings. De Villier and Frolov studied  the dynamics of the scattering and capturing process of an infinitely thin test string by a Schwarzschild black hole. However less is known on the interaction between a domain wall and a black hole; only the static configurations have been studied so far. Morisawa et al.  showed the existence of static configurations of a thick domain wall intersecting a Schwarzschild black hole in its equatorial plane. Christensen et al.  numerically found a series of static configurations of a domain wall as a Nambu-Goto membrane in the Schwarzschild spacetime, some of which represent an intersecting pair of a domain wall and a black hole. When arranged in sequence, these configurations seem to represent a scattering and capturing process of a domain wall by a black hole. In most situations of cosmological interest, the thickness of a domain wall will be much smaller than the horizon radius of a solar-mass or primordial black hole, so that the infinitely thin wall (membrane) approximation will be valid in such cases. When we further neglect the gravitational effect of a domain wall, its spacetime history, i.e., the world sheet is governed by the Nambu-Goto action and it is called the Nambu-Goto membrane.

A membrane lying in the equatorial plane of the black hole spacetime has the highest symmetry among the configurations which represent an intersecting pair of a membrane and a black hole. This simple configuration is a possible candidate for a final state of the scattering and capturing process provided such a state stably exists. Having this in mind, we study the stability of a Nambu-Goto membrane at the equatorial plane of the Reissner-Nordstrøm-de Sitter (RNdS) spacetime. The charge of the black hole and the positive cosmological constant are included to see their effect on the stability. This mimics the situation where a domain wall resulting from a vacuum phase transition is intersecting a charged primordial black hole in the early universe. We consider the linear perturbation of the membrane by means of the covariant perturbation formalism . The perturbation equation reduces to a wave equation on the world sheet with the mass term, which is negative in the presence of the charge of the black hole or the positive cosmological constant. Accordingly instability is naively expected. Solving the perturbation equation reduces to solving a two point boundary value problem. We numerically solve it by the shooting and the relaxation methods. We find that a membrane intersecting a RNdS black hole is unstable. We find the instability at least in the range of $`0.001e/M1`$ for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }>0`$, and $`0.75e/M1`$ for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$, whereas the membrane in the Schwarzschild background is stable.

While our treatment of a domain wall is simple with both its thickness and gravitational effect neglected, our model of the membrane-black hole system is all the more elementary and relevant in other contexts. The interaction between black holes and extended objects is important as an elementary physical process. Indeed much attention has recently been paid to the interaction between black holes and extended objects such as membranes or strings in the string/M-theory , the brane world scenario  etc.. For instance in the context of the brane world models, our universe is described as a four-dimensional domain wall in the five dimensional bulk spacetime. Some people argue that a black hole on the gravitating membrane is realized as a “black cigar” in the bulk spacetime which intersects the membrane .

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Sec.II we review the covariant perturbation formalism and specify the perturbation equation and the boundary conditions. The numerical algorithm is also explained there. In Sec.III we present the results of numerical and analytical considerations. Finally we summarize and discuss the results in Sec.IV.

## II BASIC EQUATIONS

### A Equation of motion

The history of a membrane (world sheet) is described by the timelike hypersurface $`(\mathrm{\Sigma },\gamma _{ab})`$ embedded in the four-dimensional spacetime $`(M,g_{\mu \nu })`$. The embedding is given by

$$x^\mu =X^\mu (\xi ^a)\mu =0,\mathrm{},3,a=0,\mathrm{},2,$$
(1)
where $`x^\mu `$’s are the spacetime coordinates and $`\xi ^a`$’s the world sheet coordinates. The induced metric $`\gamma _{ab}`$ on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is given by

$$\gamma _{ab}=X_{,a}^\mu X_{,b}^\nu g_{\mu \nu }.$$
(2)
The dynamics of the membrane is described by the Nambu-Goto action

$$S[X^\mu ,X_{,a}^\mu ]=\sigma _\mathrm{\Sigma }d^3\xi \sqrt{\gamma },$$
(3)
where $`\sigma `$ represents the surface energy density of the membrane in its rest frame.

We consider the variation of the action with respect to $`X_\mu `$,

$$\frac{\delta S}{\delta X_\mu }=\sigma (\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \beta }^\mu \gamma ^{ab}X_{,a}^\alpha X_{,b}^\beta +\mathrm{}X^\mu ),$$
(4)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \beta }^\mu `$ is the spacetime affine connection and $`\mathrm{}`$ is the d’Alembertian on the world sheet

$$\mathrm{}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{\gamma }}\frac{}{\xi ^a}(\sqrt{\gamma }\gamma ^{ab}\frac{}{\xi ^b}).$$
(5)
Recall the Gauss-Weingarten equation

$$D_bX_{,a}^\mu +\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \beta }^\mu X_{,a}^\alpha X_{,b}^\beta =K_{ab}n^\mu ,$$
(6)
where $`K_{ab}`$ is the extrinsic curvature defined as

$$K_{ab}=X_{,a}^\mu X_{,b}^\nu _\nu n_\mu ,$$
(7)
$`n_\mu `$ is the normal to the world sheet, $`D_a`$ is the world sheet covariant derivative and $`_\mu `$ is the spacetime covariant derivative. Contracting Eq. (6) with $`\gamma ^{ab}`$, we obtain

$$\mathrm{}X^\mu +\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \beta }^\mu \gamma ^{ab}X_{,a}^\alpha X_{,b}^\beta =\gamma ^{ab}K_{ab}n^\mu .$$
(8)
With this equation Eq. (4) becomes

$$\frac{\delta S}{\delta X_\mu }=\sigma \gamma ^{ab}K_{ab}n^\mu =0.$$
(9)
Eq. (9) has only the component perpendicular to the world sheet. Hence the variation parallel to the world sheet has no physical meaning. Finally the equation of motion of the membrane is

$$K=\gamma ^{ab}K_{ab}=0.$$
(10)
This is the equation of minimal surfaces. In general, Eq. (10) cannot be solved analytically.

### B Perturbation equation

As noted above, the physically meaningful measure of the perturbation $`\delta X^\mu `$ is the scalar

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=n_\mu \delta X^\mu .$$
(11)
Taking the variation of Eq. (10) with respect to $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and setting it to zero, we obtain the perturbation equation

$$\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Phi }\left({}_{}{}^{3}R{}_{}{}^{4}R_{\mu \nu }^{}h^{\mu \nu }\right)\mathrm{\Phi }=0,$$
(12)
where $`h_{\mu \nu }g_{\mu \nu }n_\mu n_\nu `$ is the projection operator onto the world sheet.

### C Perturbation of a membrane at the equatorial plane of the RNdS spacetime

A membrane lying in the equatorial plane of the black hole spacetime has the highest symmetry among the configurations found by  which represent an intersecting pair of a membrane and a Schwarzschild black hole. This simple configuration is a possible candidate for a final state of the scattering and capturing process of a membrane and a black hole provided such a state stably exists.

In general, spherically symmetric black hole spacetimes have the discrete symmetry about the equatorial plane, i.e., the equatorial plane consists of fixed points of this symmetry. Hence the equatorial plane is totally geodesic and $`K=0`$.

The most general spherically symmetric black hole spacetime is the Reissner-Nordstrøm-de Sitter spacetime

$$g_{\mu \nu }dx^\mu dx^\nu =fdt^2+f^1dr^2+r^2d\theta ^2+r^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\phi ^2,$$
(13)
where

$$f=1\frac{2M}{r}+\frac{e^2}{r^2}\frac{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{3}r^2,$$
(14)
$`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is the cosmological constant and $`M`$ and $`e`$ are the mass and charge of the black hole, respectively. The relation between the spacetime coordinates $`\{t,r,\theta ,\phi \}`$ and the world sheet coordinates $`\{T,R,\mathrm{\Psi }\}`$ of the membrane at the equatorial plane is simply

$$t=T,r=R,\theta =\frac{\pi }{2},\phi =\mathrm{\Psi }.$$
(15)
Then the induced metric (2) is

$$\gamma _{ab}d\xi ^ad\xi ^b=fdT^2+f^1dR^2+R^2d\mathrm{\Psi }^2.$$
(16)
This means that the geometry of the membrane is a three-dimensional black hole spacetime. The perturbation equation (12) becomes

$$\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Phi }+\left(\frac{e^2}{r^4}+\mathrm{\Lambda }\right)\mathrm{\Phi }=0.$$
(17)
The mass term becomes negative when the charge of the black hole or the positive cosmological constant is present, which implies instability. This is why we consider the equatorial plane of the Reissner-Nordstrøm-de Sitter spacetime. In addition, it mimics a cosmologically interesting situation where a domain wall resulting from a vacuum phase transition is intersecting a charged primordial black hole in the early universe.

By a separation of variables, $`\mathrm{\Phi }=(\chi (r)/\sqrt{r})\mathrm{exp}(i\omega t+im\phi )`$ , Eq. (17) is transformed into a Schrödinger type equation in the three-dimensional black hole spacetime

$$\frac{d^2\chi }{dr_{}^2}+V(r)\chi =\omega ^2\chi ,$$
(18)
$$V(r)=f\left[\left(\frac{m^2}{r^2}\frac{e^2}{r^4}\mathrm{\Lambda }\right)\frac{f2f^{}r}{4r^2}\right],$$
(19)
where $`r_{}=^r𝑑r/f`$ is the usual tortoise coordinate. For the cases $`M0`$ we normalize $`r,e,\mathrm{\Lambda },\omega `$ as

$$r/Mr,e/Me,\mathrm{\Lambda }M^2\mathrm{\Lambda },\omega M\omega .$$
(20)
### D Boundary conditions

The present problem reduces to solving a Schrödinger type equation, and so does the problem of the metric perturbation of a four-dimensional black hole spacetime. Hence we will follow the stability analysis of the latter.

We consider the cases $`M0`$. Then the tortoise coordinate $`r_{}`$ goes from $`\mathrm{}`$ to $`+\mathrm{}`$. $`r_{}=\mathrm{}`$ corresponds to the event horizon and $`r_{}=+\mathrm{}`$ to infinity ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$) or the cosmological horizon ($`\mathrm{\Lambda }>0`$). The potential (19) approaches zero as $`r_{}`$ goes to $`\pm \mathrm{}`$. Therefore the asymptotic solution to Eq. (18) is a linear combination of $`e^{+i\omega r_{}}`$ and $`e^{i\omega r_{}}`$. With the time dependence of the solution of the form $`e^{i\omega t}`$ , the solutions $`e^{+i\omega r_{}}`$ and $`e^{i\omega r_{}}`$ represent an ingoing wave and an outgoing wave, respectively. At infinity or the cosmological horizon we admit an outgoing wave, and at the event horizon an ingoing wave. This is because we assume no external source of perturbation of the membrane during its evolution. Hence we set the boundary conditions as follows

$$\chi \{\begin{array}{cc}C_{out}\mathrm{exp}(i\omega r_{}),\hfill & \text{(}r_{}+\mathrm{}\text{)}\hfill \\ C_{in}\mathrm{exp}(+i\omega r_{}),\hfill & \text{(}r_{}\mathrm{}\text{)}\hfill \end{array}$$
(21)
with $`C_{in/out}`$ constant. This form of boundary conditions appears in the standard analysis of a quasi-normal mode of a black hole .

With the time dependence $`e^{i\omega t}`$, $`Im(\omega )<0`$ corresponds to unstable modes. Then from the boundary conditions (21), an unstable solution to Eq. (18) decays as $`e^{|Im(\omega )|r_{}}`$ when $`r_{}`$ goes to $`+\mathrm{}`$ and as $`e^{|Im(\omega )|r_{}}`$ when $`r_{}`$ goes to $`\mathrm{}`$. Multiplying Eq. (18) by $`\overline{\chi }`$ (upper bar means the complex conjugate) and integrating by parts, we obtain

$$_{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}\left(\left|\frac{d\chi }{dr_{}}\right|^2+V\left|\chi \right|^2\right)𝑑r_{}+\left[\overline{\chi }\frac{d\chi }{dr_{}}\right]_{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}=\omega ^2_{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}\left|\chi \right|^2𝑑r_{}.$$
(22)
As long as we consuder unstable modes, the surface term on the l.h.s. vanishes and the integrals on both sides converge. Therefore we obtain

$$\omega ^2=_{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}\left(\left|\frac{d\chi }{dr_{}}\right|^2+V\left|\chi \right|^2\right)𝑑r_{}/_{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}\left|\chi \right|^2𝑑r_{}.$$
(23)
Since the r.h.s. of Eq. (23) is real, $`\omega `$ is real or pure imaginary. Here we seek for unstable modes ($`Im(\omega )<0`$). So we can set $`\omega =i\sigma (\sigma <0)`$. Then the boundary conditions (21) read

$$\chi \{\begin{array}{cc}C_{out}\mathrm{exp}(+\sigma r_{}),\hfill & \text{(}r_{}+\mathrm{}\text{)}\hfill \\ C_{in}\mathrm{exp}(\sigma r_{}),\hfill & \text{(}r_{}\mathrm{}\text{)}\hfill \end{array}.$$
(24)
We shall examine the eigenvalue problem of Eq. (18) subject to the boundary conditions (24).

### E Algorithm

The eigenvalue problem considered is reduced to a two point boundary value problem. We define four dependent variables as

$$y_1=\chi ,y_2=\frac{d\chi }{dr_{}},y_3=\sigma ,y_4=A,$$
(25)
where all $`y_i`$’s are functions of $`r_{}`$, and $`\sigma `$ and $`A`$ are constants. $`A`$ is the ratio of $`C_{in}`$ to $`C_{out}`$ (or $`C_{out}`$ to $`C_{in}`$). The evolution equations are

$$y_1^{}=y_2,y_2^{}=[V+(y_3)^2]y_1,y_3^{}=0,y_4^{}=0,$$
(26)
where the prime denotes the differentiation with respect to $`r_{}`$. We impose two sets of boundary conditions. The set 1 ($`y_4=C_{out}/C_{in}A_1`$) is

$$y_1=\mathrm{exp}(y_3r_{}^{}{}_{1}{}^{}),y_2=y_3y_1,(\text{at }r_{}=r_{}^{}{}_{1}{}^{})$$
(27)
$$y_1=y_4\mathrm{exp}(y_3r_{}^{}{}_{2}{}^{}),y_2=y_3y_1(\text{at }r_{}=r_{}^{}{}_{2}{}^{}).$$
(28)
The set 2 ($`y_4=C_{in}/C_{out}A_2`$) is

$$y_1=y_4\mathrm{exp}(y_3r_{}^{}{}_{1}{}^{}),y_2=y_3y_1,(\text{at }r_{}=r_{}^{}{}_{1}{}^{})$$
(29)
$$y_1=\mathrm{exp}(y_3r_{}^{}{}_{2}{}^{}),y_2=y_3y_1(\text{at }r_{}=r_{}^{}{}_{2}{}^{}).$$
(30)
The condition $`A_1\times A_2=1`$ is used for checking the reliability of calculations. Note that the boundary conditions (27-30) leave $`y_3,y_4`$ arbitrary. In general an arbitrary choice of $`y_3,y_4`$ at one boundary and the subsequent integration of the dependent variables do not ensure that the boundary conditions at the other boundary are satisfied. We solve this problem by the shooting method. We also perform the calculation by the relaxation method to confirm the results of the shooting method.

## III RESULTS

### A Schwarzschild case

For pure Reissner-Nordstrøm cases the potential (19) is positive semi-definite for $`m1`$:

$$V(r)=\left(1\frac{2}{r}+\frac{e^2}{r^2}\right)\left[\left(m^2\frac{1}{4}\right)\frac{1}{r^2}+\frac{3}{2r^3}\frac{9e^2}{4r^4}\right]0\text{(}rr_+\text{)},$$
(31)
where $`r_+=1+\sqrt{1e^2}`$ is the radius of the outer event horizon. The equality is satisfied only if $`m=e=1`$. Therefore, by the argument of the energy integral , there is no unstable mode subject to the boundary conditions (24) when $`m1`$.

For the Schwarzschild case with $`m=0`$ the radial function $`R(r)=\chi (r)/\sqrt{r}`$ satisfies

$$\left(1\frac{2}{r}\right)\frac{d^2R}{dr^2}+\frac{1}{r}\frac{dR}{dr}\frac{\sigma ^2}{12/r}R=0.$$
(32)
In terms of a new variable $`\zeta =\mathrm{ln}(r2)`$ this equation becomes

$$\frac{d^2R}{d\zeta ^2}+\sigma ^2r^2R=0.$$
(33)
The solution to this equation is regarded as the zero energy eigenfunction for the potential $`\sigma ^2r^2`$. This potential is positive definite since $`\sigma `$ is real and negative. Therefore we have no solution which decays when $`\zeta `$ approaches $`\pm \mathrm{}`$ (the event horizon and infinity) as required by the boundary conditions (24)

$$R(r)=\frac{\chi (r)}{\sqrt{r}}\{\begin{array}{cc}e^{\sigma r}/\sqrt{r},\hfill & \text{(}r\mathrm{}(\zeta +\mathrm{})\text{)}\hfill \\ (r2)^{2\sigma }/\sqrt{2},\hfill & \text{(}rr_+(\zeta \mathrm{})\text{)}\hfill \end{array}.$$
(34)
Hence there exists no unstable mode for the Schwarzschild case.

### B RNdS case

Before describing the numerical results, we comment on the upper bound of $`m`$ for which unstable modes may exisit in the Reissner-Nordstrøm-de Sitter case. The potential (19) takes the form

$$V(r)=\{\begin{array}{cc}fF(r)/(4r^3)\hfill & (e=0)\hfill \\ fG(r)/(4r^4)\hfill & (e0)\hfill \end{array},$$
(35)
where $`f`$ is defined by Eq. (14),

$$F(r)=5\mathrm{\Lambda }r^3+(4m^21)r+6$$
(36)
and

$$G(r)=5\mathrm{\Lambda }r^4+(4m^21)r^2+6r9e^2.$$
(37)
Firstly we consider $`e=0`$ case. $`F(r)`$ is a monotonously decreasing function of $`r`$ and has the only one root for $`r0`$. Therefore, by the arguement of the energy integral , the sufficient condition for the stability of perturbation is

$$F(r_c)0,$$
(38)
where $`r_c`$ is the radius of the cosmological horizon. Eq. (38) reads

$$m^2\frac{r_c6+5\mathrm{\Lambda }r_{c}^{}{}_{}{}^{3}}{4r_c}=4\frac{9}{r_c},$$
(39)
where $`f(r_c)=0`$ is used. When $`e=0`$, $`r_c3`$. Therefore Eq. (39) shows that at least for $`m2`$ the potential (19) is positive definite and that a membrane is stable against such perturbation.

Next we consider $`e0`$ case. For $`r0`$, $`G(r)`$ either stays negative, or becomes positive for an interval $`(r_1,r_2)`$ but otherwise negative. Then the sufficient condition for the stability of perturbation is

$$G(r_+)0\text{and}G(r_c)0,$$
(40)
which excludes the possibility that $`G(r)`$ stays negative, and ensures $`r_1r_+r_cr_2`$. When $`e^2`$ increases, $`r_+`$ and $`r_2`$ decrease and $`r_1`$ and $`r_c`$ increase. Hence it is sufficient to consider $`e^2=1`$ case. In this case Eq. (40) reads

$$m^2\mathrm{max}\{\frac{16r_c3r_c+24}{4r_{c}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}},\frac{16r_+3r_++24}{4r_{+}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}\}=4+\mathrm{max}\{\frac{3}{4r_c}+\frac{6}{r_{c}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}},\frac{3}{4r_+}+\frac{6}{r_{+}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}\},$$
(41)
where again $`f(r_+)=f(r_c)=0`$ are used. When $`\mathrm{\Lambda }>0`$, $`r_+>1+\sqrt{1e^2}=1(\text{now}e^2=1)`$. For $`r>1`$

$$\frac{3}{128}\frac{3}{4r}+\frac{6}{r^2}<5.25.$$
(42)
Therefore Eq. (41) shows that at least for $`m4`$ there exists no unstable mode.

The condition that the Reissner-Nordstrøm-de Sitter spacetime has a static region is $`\mathrm{\Lambda }<\mathrm{\Lambda }_{max}`$, where

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }_{max}(e^2)=\frac{3(1+\sqrt{98e^2})}{(184e^2)(3+\sqrt{98e^2})24e^2}.$$
(43)
This is a monotonously increasing function of $`e^2`$ and has the minimum value $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{max}(0)=1/9`$. So we numerically investigate the cases $`\mathrm{\Lambda }M^2=0,1/1000,1/100,1/10`$. We found unstable modes for various parameter sets $`(\mathrm{\Lambda },|e|)`$. The eigenvalues of $`m=0`$ modes are shown in Fig. 1. The results of the shooting method and the relaxation method agree very well, the error being within 5%.

Fig. 1 shows that when $`|e|`$ becomes larger, we have a larger $`|\sigma |`$ and hence a higher growth rate of the perturbations. Therefore the charge of the black hole indeed destabilizes the membrane at the equatorial plane. Since the membrane is electrically neutral, this instability should be understood as the curvature effect of the charge of the black hole.

As to the effect of the cosmological constant $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, we find no simple tendency: for a given $`|e|`$, a larger $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ does not necessarily lead to a larger $`|\sigma |`$. However with a non-vanishing cosmological constant the magnitude of the eigenvalue is typically $`10^2`$ for $`0.001|e|/M1`$ in contrast to the RN cases, in which the magnitude of the eigenvalue almost exponentially decreases with decreasing specific charge and is far below $`10^2`$ for $`|e|/M0.80`$. Therefore we can at least say that the cosmological constant also destabilizes the membranes. This expectation is supported by the consideration of the de Sitter background case (see Appendix A).

We plotted some of the eigenfunctions for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ cases in Fig. 2. Some features of the profiles are listed in Table I. When we decrease the value of the specific charge of the black hole, the peak of the corresponding profile gets higher and approaches the event horizon.

As noted above we found that the charge of the black hole destabilizes the membrane in general. However, in the present analysis, we could not show the existence of unstable modes for small $`|e|`$ ($`<0.75`$) when $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ due to the difficulty in the numerical calculation as follows. As $`|e|`$ becomes smaller, $`|\sigma |`$ decreases approximately in powers of $`|e|`$ for $`0.75|e|1`$ (See Fig. 3). Judging by the extrapolation of this relation to the regime $`|e|0.75`$, $`|\sigma |`$ will be infinitesimal when $`|e|0`$. In order for the asymptotic forms $`e^{\pm i\omega r_{}}`$ of $`\chi `$ to be justified, $`|V(r)|`$ must be much smaller than $`|\omega ^2|=|\sigma ^2|`$ at the boundaries. Then the coefficients in the evolution equations (26) get extremely small and we suffer from underflows of numerical calculations. By the same numerical difficulty, we leave open the possibility that unstable modes with $`m1`$ exist in the presence of the positive cosmological constant.

## IV DISCUSSION

In this paper we numerically studied the stability of a Nambu-Goto membrane at the equatorial plane of the Reissner-Nordstrøm-de Sitter spacetime and found that in general such a membrane is unstable when the black hole is charged.

A membrane is a two-dimensional extended object in the three-space. So when it moves towards a black hole, it is expected to be inevitably captured by the black hole. A series of configurations found by Christensen et al. seem to represent such situations. Among these configurations a membrane lying in the equatorial plane of the black hole spacetime has the highest symmetry and is most likely to be the final state of the scattering and capturing process. On seeing our result, however, we expect that it is not the case. In particular, Fig. 2 allows us to imagine that the membrane moves away from the equatorial plane. Then what eventually happens to that membrane? Causality prohibits the membrane from escaping from the event horizon. By analogy with the scattering process of a cosmic string off a black hole  the membrane might experience large deformation and the topology of the membrane might change. Here are some speculations on the fate of the membrane; it may settle down to some other configuration than the equatorial plane, or it may break up into two parts with one swallowed by the black hole and the other escaping to infinity. We need to perform a full dynamical computation to resolve this issue. However that is beyond the scope of this paper.

We ignored the gravitational effect of a domain wall whereas a gravitating domain wall is known to make a repulsive gravitational field , which is opposite to the strong attractive gravity of a black hole. It is quite intriguing to find out the consequences of the competition of these opposite forces.

## ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Profs. H. Sato, T. Nakamura, H. Kodama and T. Chiba for many useful comments. We also thank Y. Morisawa and R. Yamazaki for fruitful discussion. We are grateful to Dr. T. Harada for the discussion, especially, on the boundary conditions. Finally we thank the referee for constructive comments. A.I. and D.I. were supported by the JSPS. This work was supported in part by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research Fund (D.I., No. 4318).

## A de Sitter and Minkowski background cases

To understand the destabilizing effect of the positive cosmological constant, we compare the de Sitter and Minkowski cases. In these cases Eq. (18) is rewritten in terms of a new function $`P(r_{})=\chi (r_{})/\sqrt{r_{}}`$ as

$$\frac{d^2P}{dr_{}^2}\frac{1}{r_{}}\frac{dP}{dr_{}}+\left(\frac{1}{4r_{}^2}\frac{1}{4r^2}\frac{7}{6}\mathrm{\Lambda }+\sigma ^2+\frac{5}{12}\mathrm{\Lambda }^2r^2\right)P=0,$$
(A1)
where $`m`$ is set to zero for simplicity. The reason we use $`P(r_{})`$ is that in the de Sitter and Minkowski cases the potential (19) for $`\chi (r_{})`$ diverges at the center $`r=0`$ and that numerical calculations become unstable.

In the Minkowski case $`r_{}=r`$ and Eq. (A1) becomes Bessel’s differential equation of order $`0`$

$$\frac{d^2P}{d(\sigma r)^2}+\frac{1}{\sigma r}\frac{dP}{d(\sigma r)}P=0,$$
(A2)
the solution of which is a linear combination of the modified Bessel functions $`I_0(\sigma r)`$ and $`K_0(\sigma r)`$. However $`I_0(\sigma r)`$ and $`K_0(\sigma r)`$ diverge at $`r\mathrm{}`$ and $`r=0`$, respectively and do not satisfy the regularity conditions. Hence membranes are stable in the Minkowski case. (The stability for $`m1`$ cases is also verified.)

When the positive cosmological constant is present, the situation changes. In the limit of $`r0`$ $`(r_{}\mathrm{})`$, Eq. (A1) reduces to

$$\frac{d^2P}{dr_{}^2}+\frac{1}{r_{}}\frac{dP}{dr_{}}+\left(\frac{11}{9}\mathrm{\Lambda }\sigma ^2\right)P=0.$$
(A3)
Unlike Eq. (A2), the solution to Eq. (A3) differs depending on the sign of $`(11\mathrm{\Lambda }/9\sigma ^2)`$. When $`|\sigma |<\sqrt{11\mathrm{\Lambda }/9}`$, the solution is a linear combination of the Bessel function $`J_0(\alpha r_{})`$ and the Neumann function $`N_0(\alpha r_{})`$, where $`\alpha \sqrt{|11\mathrm{\Lambda }/9\sigma ^2|}`$. When $`|\sigma |>\sqrt{11\mathrm{\Lambda }/9}`$, the solution is a linear combination of the modified Bessel functions $`I_0(\alpha r_{})`$ and $`K_0(\alpha r_{})`$. The regularity condition at the center excludes $`N_0`$ and $`K_0`$ as the asymptotic solutions.

When $`|\sigma |<\sqrt{11\mathrm{\Lambda }/9}`$, the asymptotic behavior of $`P`$ near the center changes from the Minkowski case and we expect the emergence of unstable modes since $`J_0`$ is a bounded function. In fact we found unstable modes by numerical calculations. The method is similar to the one for the RNdS cases. The asymptotic form of $`P`$ near the cosmological horizon $`r_{}\mathrm{}`$ is determined to be $`e^{\sigma r_{}}/\sqrt{r_{}}`$ by the boundary condition similar to Eq. (24). The eigenvalues are $`0.18257,0.05773,0.01826`$ for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=1/10,1/100,1/1000`$, respectively. Though we performed numerical calculations just for three values of the cosmological constant, unstable modes are expected as long as the positive cosmological constant is present.

## B CODE CHECK

We calculated the energy spectra for a one-dimensional square-well potential to check the reliability of our numerical code.

We consider an eigenvalue problem

$$\frac{d^2}{dx^2}\varphi +V(x)\varphi =\sigma ^2\varphi $$
(B1)
for a square-well potential

$$V(x)=\{\begin{array}{cc}1\hfill & \text{(}|x|w\text{}w>0\text{)}\hfill \\ 0\hfill & \text{(otherwise)}\hfill \end{array}.$$
(B2)
The problem reduces to a two point boundary value problem at the boundaries $`x=x_1,x_2`$ ($`x_1<w,x_2>w`$). The dependent variables are

$$y_1=\varphi ,y_2=\frac{d\varphi }{dx},y_3=\sigma ,y_4=A,$$
(B3)
where $`\sigma `$ and $`A`$ are constants. The evolution equations and the boundary conditions are similar to Eq. (26) and Eqs. (27,28) or Eqs. (29,30), respectively.

We can analytically show that the eigenvalues for the potential (B2) satisfy the equation

$$n\pi 2ws2\mathrm{arcsin}s=0(n=0,\pm 1,\pm 2,\mathrm{})$$
(B4)
where $`s=\sqrt{1\sigma ^2}`$. The eigenvalues $`\sigma _{wn}`$ of Eq. (B1) are labeled by $`w`$ and $`n`$. We found good agreements of eigenvalues $`\sigma _{wn}`$ obtained by solving the two point boundary value problem, with those obtained by directly solving Eq. (B4) (Table II).

## C code check 2

In this paper we present the results for which the shooting and relaxation methods agree within 5 % error. The agreement is, however, far better than 5% in most cases. The comparison of the two methods is summarized in Table III for some cases.


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# Dilaton-gravity on the brane

## I Introduction

There has been tremendous interest over the last year in schemes for dimensional reduction where ordinary matter fields are confined to a lower-dimensional hypersurface, while only gravitational fields propagate throughout all of spacetime. Such speculation has been inspired by recent developments in string/M-theory where gauge-fields can be associated with the degrees of freedom of open strings whose end-points live on a D-brane hypersurface, while gravitational fields associated with closed string excitations, can propagate in the bulk . In particular Randall and Sundrum  proposed a static model where four-dimensional Newtonian gravity is recovered at low energies when considering linear perturbations about a Minkowski brane embedded in five-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime (AdS5).

Randall and Sundrum  considered pure 5-D Einstein gravity in the bulk, sourced only by a cosmological constant, whereas in a string theory or M-theory context one would also expect scalar fields, associated with the many moduli fields, in the gravitational sector, which should, in principle, also be allowed to propagate in the bulk . For example, Lukas, Ovrut and Waldram  have derived an effective five-dimensional action from a dimensional reduction from 11-dimensional M-theory which contains scalar fields in the bulk which correspond to moduli associated with the compactification of six-dimensions on a Calabi-Yau space.

A particularly elegant way to study the effective four-dimensional gravity induced in so-called ‘brane world’ models was proposed by Shiromizu, Maeda and Sasaki . They derived the effective ‘Einstein equations’ for the induced 4-D metric obtained by projecting the five-dimensional metric onto the brane world-volume. This approach yields the most general form of the four-dimensional gravitational field equations for a brane world observer whatever the form of the bulk metric, in contrast to the usual Kaluza-Klein style dimensional reduction which relies on taking a particular form for the bulk metric in order to integrate over the fifth dimension. The price to be paid for such generality, is that the brane world observer may be subject to influences from the bulk, in particular gravitational waves, which are not constrained by local quantities, i.e., the set of four-dimensional equations does not in general form a closed system. Nonetheless, when the brane is located at an orbifold fixed point under $`Z_2`$ symmetry (a “brane at the end of the world”) the energy-momentum tensor on the brane is sufficient to determine the extrinsic curvature of the brane, and together with the local induced metric, this strongly constrains the brane world gravity. In the absence of bulk matter, the effect of the bulk gravity can be described by the projected five-dimensional Weyl tensor. In many circumstances (e.g., AdS5 bulk) this can be consistently set to zero.

In this paper we will extend the work of Shiromizu, Maeda and Sasaki  to consider a simple dilaton-gravity theory with scalar and tensor fields which propagate in the bulk, with self-interaction potentials for the scalar field in the bulk and on the brane. We will give the general form for the effective scalar field and Einstein equations on the brane, in particular giving expressions for the effective gravitational Newton’s constant, and the cosmological constant on the brane, both of which become functions of the local scalar field. We also show how to recover previously found solutions for static Minkowski brane worlds and dynamical Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmologies.

## II The four-dimensional effective equations

Suppose that the $`i`$-th brane world is located in the five-dimensional spacetime as

$`Y_{(i)}(X^A)=0,`$ (1)
where $`X^A(A=0,1,2,3,5)`$ are the 5-dimensional coordinates. The effective action in 5-dimensional spacetime is then

$`S={\displaystyle d^5X\sqrt{{}_{}{}^{(5)}g}\left[\frac{1}{2\kappa _5^2}{}_{}{}^{(5)}R\frac{1}{2}(\mathrm{\Phi })^2{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }(\mathrm{\Phi })\right]}+{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}{\displaystyle _{Y_{(i)}=0}}d^4x_{(i)}\sqrt{g_{(i)}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\kappa _5^2}}K_{(i)}^\pm +L_{(i)}^{\mathrm{matter}}\lambda _{(i)}(\mathrm{\Phi })\right],`$ (2)
where $`x_{(i)}^\mu (\mu =0,1,2,3)`$ are the induced 4-dimensional brane world coordinates on the $`i`$-th brane and $`{}_{}{}^{(5)}R`$ is the 5-D intrinsic curvature in the bulk and $`K_{(i)}^\pm `$ the extrinsic curvature on either side of the brane .

The five-dimensional Einstein equations in the bulk are

$`{}_{}{}^{(5)}G_{AB}^{}=\kappa _5^2{}_{}{}^{(5)}T_{AB}^{}\kappa _5^2\left[_A\mathrm{\Phi }_B\mathrm{\Phi }{}_{}{}^{(5)}g_{AB}^{}\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(\mathrm{\Phi })^2+{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }\right)\right]`$ (3)
and the equation of motion for a dilaton $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is

$`{}_{}{}^{(5)}\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{\Phi }{\displaystyle \frac{d{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }}{d\mathrm{\Phi }}}{\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\lambda _{(i)}}{d\mathrm{\Phi }}}\delta (Y_i)={\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_{(i)}}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }_{(i)}}{d\mathrm{\Phi }}}\tau _{(i)}\delta (Y_i),`$ (4)
where $`\tau _{(i)}`$ is the trace of the energy-momentum tensor for matter on the $`i`$-th brane.

This term on the right-hand-side of the equation arises because, in a dilaton-gravity theory, one should allow for the possibility that matter on the $`i`$-th brane is minimally coupled, not with respect to the original Einstein metric, but with respect to a conformally related metric

$${}_{}{}^{(5)}\stackrel{~}{g}_{AB}^{}=\mathrm{\Omega }_{(i)}^2(\mathrm{\Phi }){}_{}{}^{(5)}g_{AB}^{}.$$
(5)
Using the definition of the energy-momentum tensor

$$\tau _{(i)\mu \nu }\frac{2}{\sqrt{g_{(i)}}}\frac{\delta }{\delta g_{(i)}^{\mu \nu }}\left(\sqrt{g_{(i)}}L_{(i)}^{\mathrm{matter}}\right)$$
(6)
we have

$$\frac{\delta }{\delta \mathrm{\Phi }}\left(\sqrt{g_{(i)}}L_{(i)}^{\mathrm{matter}}\right)=\frac{\stackrel{~}{g}_{(i)}^{\mu \nu }}{\mathrm{\Phi }}\frac{\delta }{\delta \stackrel{~}{g}_{(i)}^{\mu \nu }}\left(\sqrt{g_{(i)}}L_{(i)}^{\mathrm{matter}}\right)=\sqrt{g_{(i)}}\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_{(i)}}\frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }_{(i)}}{d\mathrm{\Phi }}\tau _{(i)}$$
(7)
which gives the right-hand-side in our Eq.(2.4).

To obtain the basic equations in one of the brane worlds, we project the variables onto the four-dimensional brane world as in Ref.. We shall assume that our four-dimensional world ($`i=1`$) is described by a domain wall (3-brane) $`(M,g_{\mu \nu })`$ at $`Y_1=0`$, which as an orbifold fixed point under $`Z_2`$ reflection symmetry, in a five-dimensional spacetime $`(,{}_{}{}^{(5)}g_{AB}^{})`$ and henceforth drop the index, $`i`$. The induced 4D metric is obtained by projecting the five-dimensional metric onto the brane world-volume:

$$g_{AB}={}_{}{}^{(5)}g_{AB}^{}n_An_B,$$
(8)
where $`n_A`$ is the spacelike unit-vector field normal to the brane. Using the Gauss and Codazzi equations, we obtain the induced four-dimensional Einstein equations as

$${}_{}{}^{(4)}G_{\mu \nu }^{}=\frac{2\kappa _5^2}{3}\left[{}_{}{}^{(5)}T_{AB}^{}g_\mu ^Ag_\nu ^B+\left({}_{}{}^{(5)}T_{AB}^{}n^An^B\frac{1}{4}{}_{}{}^{(5)}T_{C}^{C}\right)g_{\mu \nu }\right]+KK_{\mu \nu }K_\mu ^\sigma K_{\nu \sigma }\frac{1}{2}g_{\mu \nu }\left(K^2K^{\alpha \beta }K_{\alpha \beta }\right)E_{\mu \nu },$$
(9)
where the extrinsic curvature of $`M`$ is denoted by $`K_{\mu \nu }=g_\mu ^Cg_\nu ^D_Cn_D`$, and $`K=K_\mu ^\mu `$ is its trace. The effect of the bulk Weyl tensor is felt on the brane through the symmetric, trace-free tensor

$$E_{\mu \nu }{}_{}{}^{(5)}C_{AFB}^{E}n_En^Fg_\mu ^Ag_\nu ^B.$$
(10)
The Codazzi equation yields an additional equation

$$D_\nu K_\mu ^\nu D_\mu K=\kappa _5^2{}_{}{}^{(5)}T_{BC}^{}n^Cg_\mu ^B,$$
(11)
which turns out to be conservation of energy-momentum on the brane, as we will see later, where $`D_\mu `$ is the covariant derivative with respect to the induced metric $`g_{\mu \nu }`$.

The equation for $`\varphi `$ can be reduced to

$`\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{\Phi }a_C^C\mathrm{\Phi }+K\mathrm{\pounds }_n\mathrm{\Phi }+\mathrm{\pounds }_n^2\mathrm{\Phi }{\displaystyle \frac{d{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }}{d\mathrm{\Phi }}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\lambda }{d\mathrm{\Phi }}}\delta (Y_1)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }}{d\mathrm{\Phi }}}\tau \delta (Y_1),`$ (12)
where $`\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }D_\mu D^\mu ,a^\mu n^\nu _\nu n^\mu `$, $`\mathrm{\pounds }_n`$ is the Lie derivative in $`n`$ direction, and $`\lambda \lambda _{(1)}`$.

We can choose a coordinate $`\chi `$ such that the hypersurface $`\chi =0`$ coincides with our brane world ($`Y_{(1)}=0`$) and $`n_AdX^A=d\chi `$, which is a condition on the coordinate in the direction of the extra dimension. We assume this choice is possible at least in the neighborhood of the brane. This implies that

$`a^A=0,\mathrm{\pounds }_n\mathrm{\Phi }=\mathrm{\Phi }^{},\mathrm{and}\mathrm{\pounds }_n^2\mathrm{\Phi }=\mathrm{\Phi }^{\prime \prime },`$ (13)
where a prime denotes a differentiation with respect to $`\chi `$. The assumption of $`Z_2`$ symmetry about the brane allows us to expand the dilaton field $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ near the brane as

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=\varphi (x)+\mathrm{\Phi }_1(x)|\chi |+\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Phi }_2(x)\chi ^2+𝒪(\chi ^3),$$
(14)
and, inserting this into Eq. (12), we find the jump condition

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_1=\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }+\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }}{d\varphi }\tau \right),$$
(15)
The equation for the dilaton, $`\varphi `$, on the brane then becomes

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\varphi +\frac{K}{2}\left(\frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }+\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }}{d\varphi }\tau \right)\frac{d{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }}{d\varphi }=\mathrm{\Phi }_2.$$
(16)
The junction condition for the extrinsic curvature due to the energy-momentum tensor on the brane, $`S_{\mu \nu }`$, requires

$$\left[K_{\mu \nu }\right]=\kappa _5^2\left(S_{\mu \nu }\frac{1}{3}g_{\mu \nu }S\right).$$
(17)
With the ansatz of $`Z_2`$ symmetry, we have $`[K_{\mu \nu }]=K_{\mu \nu }^+K_{\mu \nu }^{}=2K_{\mu \nu }`$ and hence we obtain

$$K_{\mu \nu }=\frac{\kappa _5^2}{2}\left(S_{\mu \nu }\frac{1}{3}g_{\mu \nu }S\right).$$
(18)
Since $`\lambda `$ is a four-dimensional vacuum energy, we can split $`S_{\mu \nu }`$ as $`S_{\mu \nu }=\lambda g_{\mu \nu }+\tau _{\mu \nu }`$, where $`\tau _{\mu \nu }`$ is the energy-momentum tensor derived from the matter Lagrangian on the brane, and we then have

$`K_{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\kappa _5^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\lambda g_{\mu \nu }+\tau _{\mu \nu }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}g_{\mu \nu }\tau \right),`$ (19)
$`K`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}\kappa _5^2\left(4\lambda \tau \right).`$ (20)
Finally then, the 4-dimensional effective Einstein equations (9) can be rewritten using the bulk energy-momentum tensor, $`{}_{}{}^{(5)}T_{AB}^{}(\mathrm{\Phi })`$ given in Eq. (3), the jump condition for the scalar field derivative normal to the brane, Eq. (15), and the expression for the brane extrinsic curvature in Eq. (20), as

$`{}_{}{}^{(4)}G_{\mu \nu }^{}={\displaystyle \frac{2\kappa _5^2}{3}}\widehat{T}_{\mu \nu }(\varphi )+\left[{}_{}{}^{(4)}\mathrm{\Lambda }+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _5^2}{16}}\left(2{\displaystyle \frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }}{d\varphi }}\tau \right){\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }}{d\varphi }}\tau \right]g_{\mu \nu }+8\pi G_N(\varphi )\tau _{\mu \nu }+\kappa _5^4\pi _{\mu \nu }E_{\mu \nu },`$ (21)
where

$`\widehat{T}_{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`D_\mu \varphi D_\nu \varphi {\displaystyle \frac{5}{8}}g_{\mu \nu }(D\varphi )^2,`$ (22)
$`{}_{}{}^{(4)}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\kappa _5^2\left[{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}\kappa _5^2\lambda ^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }}\right)^2\right],`$ (23)
$`8\pi G_N`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _5^4}{6}}\lambda (\varphi ),`$ (24)
$`\pi _{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\tau _{\mu \alpha }\tau _\nu ^\alpha +{\displaystyle \frac{1}{12}}\tau \tau _{\mu \nu }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}g_{\mu \nu }\tau _{\alpha \beta }\tau ^{\alpha \beta }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{24}}g_{\mu \nu }\tau ^2.`$ (25)
This, of course, has many similarities with the effective Einstein equations on the brane found previously for pure Einstein gravity in the 5-D bulk . The definition of $`\pi _{\mu \nu }`$, which represents the contribution of terms quadratic in the 4-D energy-momentum tensor, has exactly the same form and when $`\lambda `$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ are independent of the dilaton field, $`\varphi `$, then the expressions for $`{}_{}{}^{(4)}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ and $`G_N`$ reduce to those found previously . More generally though, the effective Newton’s constant on the brane, $`G_N`$, becomes a function of the scalar field through the dependence of the brane tension, $`\lambda `$, upon $`\varphi `$. Although $`\lambda `$ appears to act like an effective Brans-Dicke field, this is not easily related to a four-dimensional Brans-Dicke type gravity theory (e.g., by a conformal transformation) due to scalar field kinetic terms and other non-standard couplings to $`\varphi `$ that appear in the effective Einstein equations. For instance the trace of the energy-momentum tensor for matter appears at linear order in the Einstein equations when $`d\mathrm{\Omega }/d\varphi 0`$, which was recently noted for particular cosmological solutions by Barger et al .

Inserting the expression for the trace of the brane extrinsic curvature given in Eq. (20) into the equation of motion for the dilaton (16) yields

$`\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\varphi ={\displaystyle \frac{d}{d\varphi }}\left({}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }+{\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _5^2}{6}}\lambda ^2\right){\displaystyle \frac{\kappa _5^2}{12}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }}(4\lambda \tau ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }}{d\varphi }}\right]\tau \mathrm{\Phi }_2.`$ (26)
The function $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$ represents the effect of the evolution of the scalar field in the bulk, upon the propagation of the field on the brane. It cannot be determined locally by the field on the brane, without solving the equations of motion in the bulk and there may be no consistent global solution for some choices of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$. This represents a limitation in the uses of the induced dilaton-gravity equations. In the case of vacuum Einstein gravity in the bulk the effect of bulk gravitational field is described solely by the symmetric, trace-free tensor $`E_{\mu \nu }`$. Symmetry requirements, together with the conservation of energy-momentum on the brane, may be sufficient to completely determine the effect of $`E_{\mu \nu }`$ in some situations (in particular, homogeneous cosmologies ) without knowing anything about the solution for Einstein equations in the bulk. In the case of scalar-tensor gravity in the bulk, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$ appears as a free-function and will allow energy-momentum conservation for the scalar field on the brane to be violated by transferring energy and/or momentum to the bulk.

Using the bulk energy-momentum tensor, $`{}_{}{}^{(5)}T_{AB}^{}(\mathrm{\Phi })`$ given in Eq. (3), and the expression for the brane extrinsic curvature in Eq. (20) in the Codazzi equation (11), we find

$$\frac{1}{2}\kappa _5^2\left(\frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }D_\mu \varphi D_\nu \tau _\mu ^\nu \right)=\kappa _5^2D_\mu \varphi \mathrm{\Phi }_1.$$
(27)
Using the jump condition for the scalar field, given in Eq. (15), we obtain

$`D_\nu \tau _\mu ^\nu ={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}{\displaystyle \frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }}{d\varphi }}\tau D_\mu \varphi ,`$

which is consistent with conservation of energy-momentum for matter on the brane, $`\stackrel{~}{D}_\nu \stackrel{~}{\tau }_\mu ^\nu =0`$, with respect to the conformally related metric $`\stackrel{~}{g}_{\mu \nu }`$ given by Eq. (5), in which the conformally rescaled energy-momentum tensor is $`\stackrel{~}{\tau }_{\mu \nu }=\tau _{\mu \nu }/\mathrm{\Omega }^2`$.

## III The dilaton-vacuum brane world

Henceforth we shall consider only dilaton-vacuum solutions on the brane ($`\tau _{\mu \nu }=0`$) in which case the effective Einstein equations simplify considerably to give

$`{}_{}{}^{(4)}G_{\mu \nu }^{}={\displaystyle \frac{2\kappa _5^2}{3}}\widehat{T}_{\mu \nu }(\varphi ){}_{}{}^{(4)}\mathrm{\Lambda }g_{\mu \nu }E_{\mu \nu }.`$ (28)
If we define a quantity $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$, such that

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_2\mathrm{\Phi }_2\frac{1}{4}\frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }\frac{d^2\lambda }{d\varphi ^2},$$
(29)
then we can rewrite the equation of motion of the dilaton on the brane (26) as

$$\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\text{ }\varphi \frac{dU_{eff}}{d\varphi }=\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_2,$$
(30)
where the effective potential for the scalar field on the brane is

$$U_{eff}=\frac{2}{\kappa _5^2}{}_{}{}^{(4)}\mathrm{\Lambda }_{4}^{}={}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }+\frac{1}{6}\kappa _5^2\lambda ^2\frac{1}{8}\left(\frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }\right)^2$$
(31)
Introducing the canonical form of the energy-momentum tensor for the scalar field on the brane as

$`T_{\mu \nu }(\varphi )=D_\mu \varphi D_\nu \varphi g_{\mu \nu }\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(D\varphi )^2+U_{eff}\right),`$ (32)
and a vector field $`J_\mu =\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_2D_\mu \varphi `$, we find that Eq.(30) yields

$`D^\nu T_{\mu \nu }=J_\mu .`$ (33)
Thus we regard $`J_\mu `$ as the energy-momentum lost from the scalar field on the brane to the bulk.

The four-dimensional Einstein equations Eq.(28) are now

$`{}_{}{}^{(4)}G_{\mu \nu }^{}={\displaystyle \frac{2\kappa _5^2}{3}}\left[T_{\mu \nu }(\varphi )+\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mu \nu }(\varphi )\right]E_{\mu \nu },`$ (34)
where the contribution from the scalar field energy density in the bulk is given by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{4}g_{\mu \nu }\left(U_{eff}\frac{1}{2}(D\varphi )^2\right).$$
(35)
This has the same equation of state as a cosmological constant, albeit with a time-dependent value proportional to the Hamiltonian density for the scalar field on the brane.

From the Einstein equations (34) and the Bianchi identity, we have

$`D^\nu E_{\mu \nu }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\kappa _5^2}{3}}D^\nu \left[T_{\mu \nu }(\varphi )+\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mu \nu }(\varphi )\right]`$ (36)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\kappa _5^2}{3}}\left[D^\nu \left(\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mu \nu }\right)J_\mu \right].`$ (37)
### A Minkowski brane worlds

We shall now demonstrate that we can recover known static solutions with four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime on the brane in the absence of matter ($`\tau _{\mu \nu }=0`$) when there is no energy transfer between bulk and brane ($`J_\mu =0`$) for particular forms of the bulk vacuum energy, $`{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, and brane tension, $`\lambda `$.

The Randall-Sundrum brane is a slice in five-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime  with constant dilaton field (both in the bulk, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1=0`$, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2=0`$, and on the brane, $`D_\mu \varphi =0`$) and vanishing Weyl curvature in the bulk, and hence $`E_{\mu \nu }=0`$ on the brane. We then recover four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime on the brane \[with $`{}_{}{}^{(4)}G_{\mu \nu }^{}=0`$ in Eq. (21) and $`\mathrm{}\varphi =0`$ in Eq. (30)\] when the vacuum energy in the bulk and brane tension are both independent of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and obey the Randall-Sundrum condition

$${}_{}{}^{(4)}\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{1}{2}\kappa _5^2\left[{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }+\frac{1}{6}\kappa _5^2\lambda ^2\right]=0.$$
(38)
Indeed we see that any vacuum solution of four-dimensional general relativity is a particular solution in this case.

In the case of a vanishing bulk cosmological constant, $`{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$, one can also obtain Minkowski spacetime on the brane with vanishing effective cosmological constant on the brane, $`{}_{}{}^{(4)}\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$, even when the brane tension is non-zero. From Eq. (23) we require

$$\frac{\kappa _5^2}{6}\lambda ^2=\frac{1}{8}\left(\frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }\right)^2$$
(39)
and hence $`\lambda \mathrm{exp}(\pm 2\kappa _5\varphi /\sqrt{3})`$, if this is to hold for all $`\varphi `$. For a coupling with this specific functional dependence upon the bulk scalar, the vanishing of the four-dimensional cosmological constant is independent of the actual amplitude of the brane tension. In particular it may be independent of radiative corrections to the brane tension due to matter fields on the brane offering a possible resolution of the cosmological constant problem . However the vanishing of $`{}_{}{}^{(4)}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is sensitive to corrections to the vacuum energy in the bulk .

In the case of a non-vanishing bulk potential the existence of a Minkowski brane requires

$${}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }+\frac{\kappa _5^2}{6}\lambda ^2=\frac{1}{8}\left(\frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }\right)^2$$
(40)
An example is provided by the five-dimensional effective action obtained by Lukas, Ovrut and Waldram  from a dimensional reduction of an eleven-dimensional Hořava-Witten model, in which $`{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }=(\alpha _0^2/6\kappa _5^2)e^{2\sqrt{2}\kappa _5\mathrm{\Phi }}`$ and $`\lambda =(\sqrt{2}\alpha _0/\kappa _5^2)e^{\sqrt{2}\kappa _5\mathrm{\Phi }}`$. Note that in this case the form of the action in Eq. (2) is invariant under a global rescaling where $`\mathrm{\Phi }\mathrm{\Phi }+`$constant and $`\alpha _0\alpha _0\times `$constant . We will return to this example when we discuss non-static solutions later. For a constant scalar field to to be a solution to the equation of motion for the scalar field on the brane, Eq. (30), we require in addition that $`J_\mu =0`$ and hence, from Eq. (29),

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_2=\frac{1}{4}\frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }\frac{d^2\lambda }{d\varphi ^2}.$$
(41)
As $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$ appears as a free function on the brane this is not a restriction on the theory parameters, but one must solve the full five-dimensional equations of motion to determine whether it is a consistent solution in the bulk .

Quite generally, if one seeks a static solution in the bulk of the form

$$ds_5^2=e^{2A(\chi )}\eta _{\mu \nu }dx^\mu dx^\nu +d\chi ^2,$$
(42)
where $`e^{2A(y)}`$ is commonly called the “warp factor”, then the five-dimensional Einstein equations (3) admit a solution of the form

$$A^{}=\frac{1}{6}W(\mathrm{\Phi }),\mathrm{\Phi }^{}=\frac{1}{2\kappa _5^2}\frac{dW}{d\mathrm{\Phi }}.$$
(43)
where the auxiliary field (or “superpotential”) $`W(\mathrm{\Phi })`$ is related to the bulk potential via the relation

$$\frac{1}{4\kappa _5^2}\left(\frac{dW}{d\mathrm{\Phi }}\right)^2\frac{1}{3}W^2=2\kappa _5^2{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }$$
(44)
The jump conditions at the brane, given in Eqs. (20) and (15) require in addition that

$$W(\varphi )=\kappa _5^2\lambda (\varphi ).$$
(45)
For a static brane solution with $`\varphi =\varphi _c`$ fixed then this requires only that $`W(\varphi _c)=\kappa _5^2\lambda (\varphi _c)`$ at that particular value . But if this relation holds for all field values, $`\varphi `$, then inserting this relation into Eq. (44) then shows that Eq. (40) for vanishing cosmological constant on the brane is satisfied on any $`\chi =`$constant hypersurface. On the other hand substituting this relation into Eq. (43) yields the required form for $`\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$ given in Eq. (41).

### B FRW dilaton-vacuum brane cosmologies

It is also possible to find Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmological solutions on the brane with time-dependent scale factor, $`a(t)`$, and scalar field, $`\varphi (t)`$, where $`t`$ is cosmic proper time, if we know, or make some assumption about the energy transfer from brane to bulk*** As remarked earlier, there is no guarantee that there exists a consistent global solution throughout the bulk for an arbitrary choice of $`\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$ on the brane., $`J_0=\dot{\varphi }\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$.

The scalar field equation of motion (30) is

$$\ddot{\varphi }+3H\dot{\varphi }=\frac{dU_{eff}}{d\varphi }+\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_2,$$
(46)
where $`H=\dot{a}/a`$ is the Hubble expansion parameter, while the Friedmann equation is

$$H^2+\frac{k}{a^2}=\frac{2\kappa _5^2}{9}\left(\rho _\varphi +\mathrm{\Delta }\rho _\varphi \right)+\frac{1}{3}E_0^0.$$
(47)
The energy density of the scalar field $`\rho _\varphi `$ and the effect from the scalar field in the bulk $`\mathrm{\Delta }\rho _\varphi `$ are given by

$$\rho _\varphi =T_0^0=\frac{1}{2}\dot{\varphi }^2+U_{eff}\mathrm{and}\mathrm{\Delta }\rho _\varphi =\mathrm{\Delta }T_0^0=\frac{1}{4}\rho _\varphi $$
(48)
The equation for $`E_0^0`$ is given from Eq. (36) as

$$\dot{E_0^0}+4HE_0^0=\frac{2\kappa _5^2}{3}\left[\frac{1}{4}\dot{\rho }_\varphi J_0\right],$$
(49)
where we have used $`E_\mu ^\mu =0`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mu \nu }=(\rho _\varphi /4)g_{\mu \nu }`$.

#### 1 Solutions with energy conservation for dilaton field on the brane

When there is no energy transfer from brane to bulk, i.e. $`J_0=0`$, we find a closed set of equations (4649) for the dilaton-vacuum universe, for a given $`U_{eff}`$. Equations (46) and (49) can then be integrated, if the bulk and brane potentials obey the generalized Randall-Sundrum condition given in Eq. (40), so that $`U_{eff}=0`$. Equation (46) can be simply integrated to give

$$\dot{\varphi }=\frac{C_\varphi }{a^3}$$
(50)
where $`C_\varphi `$ is an integration constant, and Eq. (49) becomes

$$\dot{E_0^0}+4HE_0^0=\frac{2\kappa _5^2}{3}\frac{d}{dt}\left(\frac{C_\varphi ^2}{8a^6}\right).$$
(51)
This in turn can be integrated to give

$$E_0^0=\frac{\kappa _5^2C_\varphi ^2}{4a^6}+\frac{_0}{a^4},$$
(52)
where $`_0`$ is another integration constant. Inserting Eqs. (50) and (52) into Eq. (47), we find

$$H^2+\frac{k}{a^2}=\frac{\kappa _5^2C_\varphi ^2}{6a^6}+\frac{_0}{3a^4}.$$
(53)
This is the same as the standard Friedmann equation with stiff matter, with energy density proportional to $`a^6`$, and radiation, with energy density is proportional to $`a^4`$.

The general solution with an initial singularity ($`a=0`$) can be expressed in terms of the conformal time, $`\eta =𝑑t/a`$, as

$$a^2=\frac{\tau \left(\sqrt{6}\kappa _5|C_\varphi |+_0\tau \right)}{3\left(1+k\tau ^2\right)},$$
(54)
where

$$\tau \{\begin{array}{cc}|\eta |& \mathrm{for}k=0\\ \mathrm{tan}|\eta |& \mathrm{for}k=+1\\ \mathrm{tanh}|\eta |& \mathrm{for}k=1\end{array},$$
(55)
and

$$\sqrt{\frac{2}{3}}\kappa _5(\varphi \varphi _0)=\pm \mathrm{ln}\left|\frac{_0\tau }{\sqrt{6}\kappa _5|C_\varphi |+_0\tau }\right|,$$
(56)
for $`_00`$, or

$$\sqrt{\frac{2}{3}}\kappa _5(\varphi \varphi _0)=\pm \mathrm{ln}\left|\tau \right|,$$
(57)
when $`_0=0`$, where $`\pm `$ corresponds to the sign of $`C_\varphi `$. The initial singularity appears at $`\tau =0`$. We also find a big crunch at $`\tau =\tau _c\sqrt{6}\kappa _5|C_\varphi |/|_0|`$ if $`_0<0`$ for $`k=0`$ and 1 and if $`_0\sqrt{6}\kappa _5|C_\varphi |`$ for $`k=1`$.

Solutions with $`C_\varphi 0`$ start expanding away from the initial singularity with

$$a=\left(\frac{3}{2}\kappa _5^2C_\varphi ^2\right)^{1/6}t^{1/3}$$
(58)
This is just the standard cosmological solution for a spatially flat universe with stiff matter. Since we have a massless dilaton field, we naturally expect such a solution as a particular solution. Spatially flat models ($`k=0`$) with $`_0>0`$ then approach the standard radiation-dominated evolution with

$$a=\left(\frac{4_0}{3}\right)^{1/4}t^{1/2},$$
(59)
but if $`_0<0`$ then the universe will recollapse to a big crunch when the conformal time reaches $`\eta =\sqrt{6}\kappa _5|C_\varphi |/|_0|>0`$. Although the similar big crunch appears for $`k=1`$ if $`_0\sqrt{6}\kappa _5|C_\varphi |`$, a non-singular solution also exists in the same parameter range. In particular, if $`C_\varphi =0`$, the open model with $`k=1`$ and $`_0<0`$ is always non-singular.

There is another exact solution for $`k=1`$ when $`_0\sqrt{6}\kappa _5|C_\varphi |`$, which is

$$a^2=\frac{a_0^2}{(1\tau ^2)}\left[1\left(\frac{\tau }{\tau _{}}\right)^2\right],$$
(60)
and

$$(\varphi \varphi _0)=3C_\varphi \mathrm{ln}\left|\frac{\tau _{}\tau }{\tau _{}+\tau }\right|,$$
(61)
where

$`\tau `$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{tanh}|\eta |`$ (62)
$`a_0^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{6}}\left[|_0|+\sqrt{_0^26\kappa _5^2C_\varphi ^2}\right]`$ (63)
$`\tau _{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{6}\kappa _5|C_\varphi |}}\left[|_0|+\sqrt{_0^26\kappa _5^2C_\varphi ^2}\right](1).`$ (64)
This solution is non-singular: that is, the infinitely large universe ($`a=\mathrm{}`$) contracting from the past infinity ($`t=\mathrm{}`$), bounces at $`t=0`$ with a finite scale factor $`a_0`$, and then expands to $`a=\mathrm{}`$ as $`t\mathrm{}`$.

We summarize the asymptotic behaviors of the solutions in Tables 1 and 2 for the cases of $`C_\varphi 0`$ and $`C_\varphi =0`$, respectively.

#### 2 Solutions with time-dependent radion

While the assumption of no energy transfer to or from the scalar field on the brane gives simple cosmological solutions on the brane, these differ from previously derived solutions for the full five-dimensional dilaton-gravity with $`U_{eff}=0`$ found by Lukas et al . They considered a five-dimensional metric

$$ds_5^2=n^2dt^2+a^2d𝐱^2+b^2dy^2$$
(65)
where $`n`$, $`a`$ and $`b`$, and the scalar field $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ are all separable functions of $`t`$ and $`y`$. In this case the five dimensional equations can be related to a four-dimensional effective theory by a Kaluza-Klein-type dimensional reduction where one integrates out the $`y`$-dependence. Although the radion $`b`$ is non-minimally coupled to the 4D metric and scalar, $`\varphi `$, one can recover standard 4D Einstein gravity with minimally coupled radion, by working in terms of the conformally transformed time $`\overline{t}`$ and scale factor, $`\overline{a}`$, where (see, e.g., Ref. )

$$ds_5^2=b^1\left(n^2d\overline{t}^2+\overline{a}^2d𝐱^2\right)+b^2dy^2.$$
(66)
Conversely, working in the original frame, one finds an energy transfer between the scalar field on the brane, $`\varphi (t)`$, and the radion field $`b`$, described by $`J_0(\dot{b}/b)\rho _\varphi `$. This ties in with our expectation that the energy density of the scalar field in the bulk, (which contributes to the effective Einstein equations on the brane through the non-local $`\mathrm{\Delta }T_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`E_{\mu \nu }`$ tensors) will change with the expansion/contraction of the bulk metric. At the same time the expansion of the bulk metric is itself determined by the local density. In order to obtain separable solutions for the bulk metric, Lukas et al  require $`\mathrm{ln}b\mathrm{\Phi }`$ in the bulk, corresponding to $`J_0\dot{\varphi }^3`$ on the brane.

If we describe the brane to bulk energy transfer by

$$J_0=\sqrt{2}\mathrm{\Gamma }\kappa _5\dot{\varphi }^3,$$
(67)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ is a constant, then Eq. (46), with $`dU_{eff}/d\varphi =0`$, can be integrated to give

$$\dot{\varphi }=\frac{C_\varphi }{a^3e^{\sqrt{2}\mathrm{\Gamma }\kappa _5\varphi }},$$
(68)
which reduces to our previous solution given in Eq. (50) when $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0`$. The remaining equations (49) and (47) can be integrated if we make the power-law ansatz

$$a|t|^p\mathrm{and}e^{\sqrt{2}\kappa _5\varphi }|t|^q,$$
(69)
where the dilaton evolution Eq. (46) requires $`3p+\mathrm{\Gamma }q=1`$. Equation (49) yields

$$E_0^0=\frac{(4p1)q^2}{8(2p1)}|t|^2+_0|t|^{4p}.$$
(70)
The second term in the right hand side is the “dark radiation” term, which is proportional to $`a^4`$. For consistency with our power-law ansatz, we require that $`_0`$ must be zero except for $`p=1/2`$. Inserting the solution (70) into the modified Friedmann equation (47) with $`U_{eff}=0`$ for $`p1/2`$, we find $`12p(2p1)=q^2`$. Combined with the requirement that $`3p+\mathrm{\Gamma }q=1`$ this yields the quadratic

$$3(3+8\mathrm{\Gamma }^2)p^26(1+2\mathrm{\Gamma }^2)p+1=0.$$
(71)
We then find a one-parameter family of power-law solutions (69) with exponents (see Figure 1)

$`p`$ $`=`$ $`p_{(\pm )}={\displaystyle \frac{3(2\mathrm{\Gamma }^2+1)\pm 2\sqrt{3}\mathrm{\Gamma }\sqrt{3\mathrm{\Gamma }^2+1}}{3(8\mathrm{\Gamma }^2+3)}}`$ (72)
$`q`$ $`=`$ $`q_{(\pm )}={\displaystyle \frac{2[\mathrm{\Gamma }\sqrt{3(3\mathrm{\Gamma }^2+1)}]}{8\mathrm{\Gamma }^2+3}}.`$ (73)
For $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1`$ we recover the solutions of Lukas et al  with

$$p_{(\pm )}=\frac{3}{11}\left(1\pm \frac{4\sqrt{3}}{9}\right)\mathrm{and}q_{(\pm )}=\frac{2}{11}\left(12\sqrt{3}\right).$$
(74)
These solutions were generalised to spatially curved FRW models including an additional bulk scalar field by Reall , and for different potential exponents by Lidsey . In the notation of Ref.  they are type II solutions.

The “dynamical instability” of the self-tuning potentials \[obeying the condition given in Eq. (39)\] reported in Ref.  is recovered for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\pm \sqrt{1/24}`$ where we obtain $`p=1/4`$ and $`q=\pm \sqrt{3/2}`$. The 4D observer sees this as the runaway behaviour of a massless scalar field in a contracting cosmology for $`t<0`$ which is always losing energy to the bulk ($`J_0<0`$).

We recover the stiff-matter dominated solution given in Eq. (58) with $`p_{(\pm )}=1/3,q_{(\pm )}=2/\sqrt{3}`$ for $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0`$. Over the entire range $`\mathrm{}<\mathrm{\Gamma }<\mathrm{}`$, $`p_{(+)}`$ changes monotonically from 0 to 1/2, while $`q_{(+)}`$ always takes negative values from zero to zero, having its minimum value $`\sqrt{6}/2`$ at $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=\sqrt{6}/12`$. Note that the solution with $`(p_{()}(\mathrm{\Gamma }),q_{()}(\mathrm{\Gamma }))`$ is the same as that obtained by changing the sign of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$, i.e. the solution with $`(p_{(+)}(\mathrm{\Gamma }),q_{(+)}(\mathrm{\Gamma }))`$.

## IV Conclusion and Remarks

In this paper we have derived the equations of motion for the induced metric and the scalar field on a four-dimensional brane world embedded in five-dimensional Einstein gravity plus a scalar field, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, with self-interaction potential energy $`{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }(\mathrm{\Phi })`$ and brane tension $`\lambda (\mathrm{\Phi })`$. In the case where $`\mathrm{\Phi }=`$ constant we recover the modified Einstein equations first derived in Ref. .

More generally, we find that the induced cosmological constant on the brane is given by the sum of three parts (i) the bulk cosmological constant, $`{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, (ii) the brane tension, which yields extrinsic curvature of the brane, $`\lambda ^2`$, and, (iii) the first derivative of the brane tension, which leads to a discontinuity in the scalar field gradient normal to the brane. The resulting effective cosmological constant is given in Eq. (31) as

$${}_{}{}^{(4)}\mathrm{\Lambda }=\frac{\kappa _5^2}{2}\left[{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }+\frac{1}{6}\kappa _5^2\lambda ^2\frac{1}{8}\left(\frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }\right)^2\right].$$
(75)
Setting this to zero generalises the Randall-Sundrum condition  (recovered for $`d\lambda /d\varphi =0`$), needed to obtain 4D Minkowski space-time solutions on the brane. This is automatically satisfied for all values of the scalar-field in supergravity theories  where the bulk and brane potentials are derived from the same superpotential. A special case is provided by the self-tuning potentials  for which $`{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ and $`\lambda e^{\pm 2\varphi /\sqrt{3}}`$. It is interesting to note that a static solution does not require a minimum for either $`{}_{}{}^{(5)}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ or $`\lambda `$, but only that the induced $`{}_{}{}^{(4)}\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ has a stationary value.

In addition to the canonically defined energy-momentum tensor for the scalar field on the brane, the energy density of the scalar and gravitational waves in the bulk also contribute to the 4D spacetime curvature. The energy transfer between brane and bulk as seen by the 4D observer is parameterised by the 4-vector $`J_\mu =(D_\mu \varphi )\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_2`$, which cannot be determined by the 4D equations but must be determined from the full 5D solution. Nonetheless we are able to recover known FRW cosmological solutions with time-dependent $`\varphi (t)`$ by parameterising $`J_0\dot{\varphi }^3`$.

In this paper we have focussed upon dilaton-vacuum solutions on the brane, but in the presence of ordinary matter, the brane tension, $`\lambda (\varphi )`$, determines the strength of the gravitational (Newton’s) constant on the brane, $`G_N\lambda `$. The evolution equation for the scalar field then couples the field on the brane to the trace of the energy-momentum tensor, $`\tau `$, for ordinary matter on the brane. From Eqs. (26) and (33) we obtain

$$J_\mu =(D_\mu \varphi )\left\{\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }_2+\frac{\kappa _5^2}{12}\left[\frac{d\lambda }{d\varphi }(4\lambda \tau )\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}\frac{d\mathrm{\Omega }}{d\varphi }\right]\tau \right\},$$
(76)
where we allow for the possibility that matter may be minimally coupled in a conformally related metric $`\stackrel{~}{g}_{\mu \nu }=\mathrm{\Omega }^2(\varphi )g_{\mu \nu }`$. Such a picture has important consequences for any attempt to understand the present value of the 4D cosmological constant, and its relation to the 4D Planck scale, in a brane world context .

While this work was being completed we became aware of related work by Barceló and Visser  and Mennim and Battye .

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors are grateful to the organisers of the Structure Formation in the Universe workshop at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, where this work was begun. KM is supported partially by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research Fund of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (Specially Promoted Research No. 08102010) and by the Yamada foundation. DW is supported by the Royal Society. The authors thank Richard Battye, Roy Maartens, Andrew Mennim, Harvey Reall and Matt Visser for useful comments and discussions.


text:
# Nuclear Transparency in Heavy Ion Collisions at 14.6 GeV/nucleon

## Abstract

The probability of a projectile nucleon to traverse a target nucleus without interaction is calculated for central Si-Pb collisions and compared to the data of E814. The calculations are performed in two independent ways, via Glauber theory and using the transport code UrQMD. For central collisions Glauber predictions are about 30 to 50% higher than experiment, while the output of UrQMD does not show the experimental peak of beam rapidity particles.

PACS number: 25.75.-q

Keywords: Nuclear Transparency; Wounded Nucleon

, , thanks: On leave of absence from Department of Physics, Jilin University, Changchun, China. thanks: Corresponding Address: Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Heidelberg, Philosophenweg 19, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany. Tel: 06221-549440; Fax: 06221-549331; Email: Joerg.Huefner@urz.uni-heidelberg.de.

*Fakultät für Physik und Astronomie,*
*Universität Heidelberg, Germany*

submitted to Nuclear Physics A

The dynamics of a heavy ion collision is a complicated many-body problem. It is the task of appropriately designed experiments to isolate one particular aspect of the dynamics and elucidate its physics. Wounded nucleons are one of the open problems. In a heavy ion collision a nucleon may undergo a sequence of collisions, which follow so rapidly one after another, that the nucleon is no more in its ground state, even not necessarily in any definite excited baryonic resonance (like $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ or $`N^{}`$). We will speak of a wounded nucleon. In a next encounter with another nucleon this wounded nucleon will not interact with the free space NN cross section $`\sigma _{in}^{NN}`$ but with an effective one $`\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}`$. Is it possible to determine $`\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}`$ from experiment?

The E814 collaboration has designed an experiment which may answer this question . At the energy of 14.6 GeV/nucleon, the projectile 28Si collides with Al, Cu and Pb and the beam rapidity nucleons are studied as a function of the centrality of the reaction (controlled by a measurement of the transverse energy). The beam-rapidity nucleons belong to the projectile and have not lost any energy in the reaction. Of course, in a peripheral reaction one always has the so called spectator nucleons, which never hit the target nucleus. They are not interesting for our purpose. However, in a central event, e.g., for Si on Pb, one still sees beam rapidity nucleons, i.e., nucleons of Si which go through the target nucleus without energy loss. The target nucleus is transparent for these projectile nucleons. We expect the transparency of a heavy nucleus like Pb to be small. Indeed, the “survival probability” $`S`$ for a projectile nucleon to pass through the target without any inelastic interaction has been measured to $`S_{exp}=3.5\times 10^3`$ for central Si-Pb collisions . Does this result contain information about wounded nucleons and effective NN cross sections?

We proceed in the following ways: The transparency is calculated *without* assuming any exotic phenomena and then the quality of agreement with experiment is judged. We use two complementary methods of calculation

* Glauber theory, in which the physics and formalism is simple and transparent, though not always realistic;
* Cascade calculation (UrQMD), which represents present-day state-of-the-art and may be compared to earlier calculations (Bass et al. ).

The survival probability $`S`$ for a projectile nucleon to pass through the target without inelastic interaction is calculated in a Glauber-type approximation (straight trajectories, frozen nucleons) as

$$S_G(b,\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}})=^2sT_p(\stackrel{}{b}\stackrel{}{s})e^{\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}A_tT_t(\stackrel{}{s})},$$
(1)
where $`\stackrel{}{b}`$ is the impact parameter of the nucleus-nucleus collision, $`T_p(b)`$ and $`T_t(b)`$ are the thickness functions ($`T(b)=𝑑z\rho (b,z),`$ $`d^3x\rho (x)=1`$) of projectile and target, respectively. The straight line geometry is certainly justified for the through-going nucleons. The use of “frozen” nucleons and the neglect of any other degrees of freedom, like mesons, need justification. We consider a target nucleon and estimate the time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ in its rest system which has elapsed between the arrival times of the first and the last projectile nucleons: $`\mathrm{\Delta }t2R_p/\gamma _p`$ where $`2R_p7`$ fm is the diameter of the Si projectile and $`\gamma _p16`$ is the Lorenz factor for the experiment under consideration. The time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t0.5`$ fm/c is rather short: (i) The target nucleon has not moved significantly in space (frozen approximation is good). (ii) According to the uncertainty principle the intrinsic excitation energy is uncertain by $`\mathrm{\Delta }E(\mathrm{\Delta }t)^10.4`$ GeV and does not allow the assignment of a definite excited state. (iii) Secondary hadrons are not yet formed since typical formation times are of order 1 fm/c.

The value of the transparency $`S`$ in Eq. (1) depends on the effective cross section $`\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}`$. Using Saxon-Woods parameterizations for the densities $`\rho _t`$ and $`\rho _p`$ with the surface thickness $`a=0.52`$ fm for all nuclei and the half-density radius $`r_A`$ such that the root-mean-square radius of the nucleus equals the charge radius , the survival probability $`S(b,\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}})`$ is calculated for two values $`\sigma _{in}^{NN}=30`$ and $`\sigma _{tot}^{NN}=39`$ mb which correspond to the inelastic NN cross section and the total one at this energy, respectively. The results are displayed in Fig. 1. The experimental point, measured at transverse energy $`E_t^c=15.5`$ GeV is also shown in the figure. It is obtained from the measured mean multiplicity $`M_c`$ of beam rapidity protons by

$$S_{exp}(E_t)=M_c(E_t)/Z,$$
(2)
where $`Z=14`$ is the number of protons in Si. We have assumed – as the authors of the experiment do – that the highest $`E_t^c`$-bin corresponds to a central collision which is assigned a value $`b=0`$. Then the experimental value is close to the curve $`\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}=30`$ mb. In fact the equation $`S_G(b=0,\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}})=S_{exp}(E_t^c=15.5`$ GeV) leads to a value $`\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}=31.1\pm 0.7`$ mb. This result reproduces a similar calculation using uniform density distributions by the E814 collaboration , who have concluded that $`\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}=\sigma _{in}^{NN}`$ within error bars and no anomaly being visible.

The crucial step in the argument is the assignment of $`b=0`$ to the highest $`E_t`$-bin. Actually, a given value of $`E_t`$ selects a distribution of impact parameters only within a band $`\mathrm{\Delta }b(E_t)`$ which is quite large. We study the relation between $`E_t`$ and $`b`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }b`$ in the form of a probability distribution$`P(E_t,b)`$, which gives the probability that values of $`\stackrel{}{b}`$ contribute to events with a given value of $`E_t`$. We normalize it as $`𝑑E_tP(E_t,b)=1`$. With this function and the differential inelastic heavy ion cross section d$`{}_{}{}^{2}\sigma _{in}^{}/d^2b`$, one can obtain the dependence of the survival function $`S(E_t,\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}})`$ as a function of the transverse energy

$$S(E_t,\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}})=\frac{d^2bS(b,\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}})P(E_t,b)𝑑\sigma _{in}/d^2b}{d\sigma _{in}/dE_t},$$
(3)
where

$$\frac{d\sigma _{in}}{dE_t}=d^2bP(E_t,b)\frac{d\sigma _{in}}{d^2b}.$$
(4)
We will use Eq. (4) to determine $`P(E_t,b)`$ from a comparison with the measured transverse energy distribution $`d\sigma _{in}/dE_t`$. With a reasonable Gaussian parameterization of $`P_G(E_t,b)`$ for the Glauber calculation (or with $`P_U(E_t,b)`$ from a UrQMD calculation, see below), $`S(E_t,\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}})`$ can be determined from Eqs. 1 and 3 without ambiguity. We discuss our parameterizations.

The inelastic cross section d$`{}_{}{}^{2}\sigma _{in}^{}/d^2b`$ is taken from the folding model

$$\frac{d\sigma _{in}}{d^2b}(b)=1exp[\sigma _{in}^{NN}A_pA_td^2sT_p(\stackrel{}{b}\stackrel{}{s})T_t(s)].$$
(5)
The parameterization of $`P(E_t,b)`$ is more model dependent, and we calculate it in two ways: (i) in the formalism of Glauber theory, and call it $`P_G(E_t,b)`$, and (ii) deduce it from results of the cascade calculation, $`P_U(E_t,b)`$. To calculate $`P_G`$ we assume a Gaussian parameterization

$$P_G(E_t,b)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi \sigma _t^2(b)}}exp\{\frac{[E_tE_t(b)]^2}{2\sigma _t^2(b)}\},$$
(6)
which satisfies the normalization condition. We make the usual assumptions  for the functions $`E_t(b)`$ and $`\sigma _t(b)`$

$$E_t(b)=N(b)ϵ_0,$$
(7)
$$\sigma _t^2(b)=N(b)ϵ_0^2\omega .$$
(8)
Here $`N(b)`$ is calculated in the “collision model”

$$N(b)=\sigma _{in}^{NN}A_tA_pd^2bT_p(\stackrel{}{s})T_t(\stackrel{}{b}\stackrel{}{s}),$$
(9)
which equals the mean number of NN collisions in a projectile-target interaction with impact parameter $`b`$. The proportionality constant $`ϵ_0`$ between the observed transverse energy $`E_t`$ and $`N(b)`$ depends on the dynamics of hadron production, but also on the experimental set up (chosen rapidity interval and acceptance of counter). It will be a fit parameter. The ansatz $`\sigma _t^2N(b)`$ corresponds to the hypothesis that the fluctuations in $`N(b)`$ are of statistical origin. It is known, however, that the proportionality constant $`\omega `$ in Eq. (8) depends strongly on the rapidity interval of the accepted particles . The reason is not clear . We take $`\omega `$ as a free parameter.

Using expressions (5) to (8) we have calculated $`d\sigma _{in}/dE_t`$ and have varied the parameters $`ϵ_0`$ and $`\omega `$ until the data for Si-Pb are fitted. The result is shown in Fig. 2 with $`\sigma _{in}^{NN}=30`$ mb, $`ϵ_0=0.067`$ GeV, $`\omega =7.8`$. A calculation of $`N(b)`$ in Eqs. (7-8) within the wounded-nucleon model  gives a similarly good fit to the data for $`d\sigma _{in}/dE_t`$.

According to Eq. (3), $`P(E_t,b)`$ determines the integration region in impact parameter $`b`$, which contributes to the integral for a given value of $`E_t`$. Fig. 1 shows the distribution $`bP_G(E_t,b)`$ for a central collision ($`E_t^c=15.5`$ GeV) derived in the Glauber formalism, and the corresponding one, $`bP_U(E_t^c,b)`$, calculated (see below) with the help of the code UrQMD . Both distributions agree within statistics, with a peak around 1.7 fm with a half width of about 2.5 fm. Using the functions $`S_G(b,\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}})`$ and $`P_G(E_t^c,b)`$ as shown in Fig. 1, the calculated value of $`S_G(E_t^c`$, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}})`$ gets contributions from a considerable range of values of $`b`$. We find

$$S(E_t^c,\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}=30\mathrm{m}\mathrm{b})/S_{exp}=3.47$$
(10)
The calculated transparency is too large by a factor of three.. Should one rather use $`\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}=\sigma _{tot}^{NN}`$ instead? We think yes: Although elastic scattering changes the rapidity of the projectile nucleon only marginally, it increases the transverse momentum of a nucleon, and an elastically scattered nucleon is not accepted within the experimental window $`p_t<0.3`$ GeV with a large probability. The results of the Glauber-type calculations are compared with experiment in Fig. 4. We discuss this figure after we have described the second approach.

The UrQMD calculations presented in this paper are based on the standard version 1.1 . As mentioned in , due to leakage in the TCAL , there is less than half of the $`E_t`$ visible. This has two consequences:

(i) The $`E_t`$ scale of the data cannot be directly compared with that of the cascade calculation. (ii) The data have additional fluctuations, visible as a flatter slope of the E814 $`E_t`$-distribution beyond the knee. Simulating the leakage in the Monte Carlo by simply selecting only 37% of the particles hitting the TCAL fixes both problems. The resulting $`E_t`$-distribution agrees quite well with the data (Fig. 2). In order to compare to the $`E_t`$-selected proton rapidity distributions of E814, we have used the absolute cross section given there – 593, 102 and 6.9 mb – for the three centrality bins shown in Fig. 3. The mean impact parameters for these bins are 3.6, 2.1, and 1.6 fm, resp., in UrQMD.

Fig. 3 shows the rapidity distributions for protons + neutrons for the three $`E_t`$ bins. The data points are shown by the dots, while the two histograms represent the results of the UrQMD calculation with an upper cut in $`p_t`$ at 0.3 GeV/c. The two histograms show results assuming either perfect acceptance or taking the E814 experimental acceptance cut into account (hatched area). The two histograms are rather similar in the region of beam rapidity ($`y_B=3.44`$). While calculations agree with the data in the interval $`6<E_t<11`$ GeV, there is a clear discrepancy in the region around beam rapidity for the two other $`E_t`$ intervals (middle and lower picture): The calculations do not show any peak, while the data do.

Fig. 4 shows a comparison between experiment and our two calculations for the multiplicity of beam rapidity protons. In the analysis of the data and in the output of UrQMD, two different criteria are employed to characterize “beam rapidity protons”: (i) all protons with $`y>3`$ (black dots for the experiment and triangles for the UrQMD calculation); (ii) twice the number of protons with $`y_B>3.44`$ \- assuming the distribution to be symmetric around $`y_B`$ (open circles for the experiment and black squares for the UrQMD calculation). While the two criteria do not give very different results for the experiment, they lead to very different values for UrQMD up to a factor of five smaller for the second method. This reflects the fact already observed in Fig. 3 that UrQMD does not produce a peak at beam rapidity for the more central values of $`E_t`$. It is therefore not meaningful to compare data and results from UrQMD for $`E_t>10`$ GeV. For values of $`E_t<10`$ GeV calculation and data agree to better than a factor of two – the calculations are above the data for $`E_t=5`$ GeV and below the data at $`E_t=10`$ GeV. The result of the Glauber calculations (solid curve for $`\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}=\sigma _{tot}=39`$ mb, dashed curve $`\sigma _{\mathrm{eff}}=\sigma _{in}=30`$ mb) are nearly always above the data. The solid curve agrees within 30-50% for central values of $`E_t`$, but agreement worsens towards smaller values of $`E_t`$. At $`E_t=5`$ GeV the Glauber calculation is a factor 3 higher than the data. Note that in this region also the results of UrQMD lie above the data by a factor of 1.5. These discrepancies may partly have the following origin: Small values of $`E_t`$ correspond to peripheral reactions with several nucleons being spectator particles. All spectator nucleons are included in the calculations; spectator nucleons bound in deuterons, alpha particles etc., however, are not contained in the data.

In summary, the two theoretical approaches, Glauber theory and UrQMD, applied to the transverse energy dependence of the nuclear transparency, have yielded only a semi-quantitative understanding of the data. At small values of $`E_t`$ (peripheral reactions) calculations are systematically above the data. In the interesting regime of central collisions, Glauber theory predicts values of 30 to 50% above the data, while UrQMD shows clearly no peak of beam-rapidity particles so that the results are only an upper limit.

Although the theoretical situation is still far from being satisfactory the analysis of beam-rapidity particles in heavy ion collisions may potentially be a good way to investigate the question of effective cross sections of wounded nucleons.

We thank P. Braun-Munzinger, S. Kahana, B. Kopeliovich and J. Stachel for several discussions. H.M. Ding is grateful to the Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Heidelberg for its hospitality and is grateful for a fellowship of the government of the People’s Republic of China. This research is partly supported by the BMFT under grant O6HD856.


text:
# New Lower Bound on Fermion Binding Energies

## Abstract

We derive a new lower bound for the ground state energy $`E^\mathrm{F}(N,S)`$ of $`N`$ fermions with total spin $`S`$ in terms of binding energies $`E^\mathrm{F}(N1,S\pm 1/2)`$ of $`(N1)`$ fermions. Numerical examples are provided for some simple short-range or confining potentials.

There is a persisting interest in deriving lower bounds on the binding energy of $`N`$-particle systems. Some early investigations were motivated by fundamental studies on the thermodynamic limit or the stability of matter . Also, the search for a lower bound is rather natural once an upper bound is provided by variational estimates.

Many efforts have been devoted in particular to express a bound on the binding energy $`E_N`$ of a $`N`$-body system in terms of a $`(N1)`$-body energy $`E_{N1}`$ with modified constituent mass or interaction strength. Thanks to a proper account for the center-of-mass motion of the subsystems , the situation is now rather satisfactory in the zero-spin boson sector: the bound of Hall and Post  is saturated for the harmonic oscillator and approaches closely the exact result for many other potentials. An extension has been derived for three and four particles with different masses  where, again, saturation is obtained in the case of harmonic forces.

The situation is far more difficult for fermions. The elegant bound derived by Lévy-Leblond  suffers from the fact that the energy of $`(N1)`$-body subsystems is replaced by its rest energy without including its overall kinetic energy. As a result, saturation is never reached.

A significant but partial improvement was obtained by Basdevant and Martin , who used subtle convexity inequalities. Their bound improves that of Lévy-Leblond in some cases, and becomes exact for the harmonic oscillator. Their approach, however, is restricted to confining potentials $`r^q`$, $`q1`$, or superpositions of such power-law potentials with positive weight factors.

In this letter, we use group-theoretical techniques to derive a general lower bound on the $`N`$-body energy of an interacting system of particles with internal degrees of freedom. The decomposition of the Hamiltonian is supplemented by considerations on the symmetry structure of the wave function. Numerical tests are presented and possible generalizations are sketched, in particular for quantum dots, i.e., particles interacting both among themselves and with an external potential.

Let us consider first $`N`$ identical particles of mass $`m`$ whose interaction does not depend on their spins. This corresponds to the Hamiltonian

$$H_N(m,g)=\underset{i}{}\frac{𝐩_i^2}{2m}+g\underset{i<j}{}V(r_{ij}),$$
(1)
where $`r_{ij}=|𝐫_j𝐫_i|`$ is the distance between two particles. The case of particles with different masses is treated in Ref. .

A first decomposition of this Hamiltonian is

$$H_N(m,g)=\frac{1}{N2}\underset{i}{}H_{N1}^{(i)}(\frac{N1}{N2}m,g),$$
(2)
where the constituent mass in $`H_{N1}`$ is increased, since the kinetic energy $`𝐩_1^2/(2m)`$, for instance, is shared by $`(N1)`$ terms. The $`i^{\mathrm{th}}`$ particle is absent from $`H_{N1}^{(i)}`$. Using the variational principle with the ground state of the $`N`$-body system as trial wave-function leads to an inequality on the ground-state energies $`E_N`$ .

$$E_N(m,g)\frac{N}{N2}E_{N1}(\frac{N1}{N2}m,g),$$
(3)
which can be rewritten differently, using the obvious identity $`E(\alpha m,g)=E(m,\alpha g)/\alpha `$. This inequality is never saturated, because the overall translation energy of the $`(N1)`$-body subsystems within the $`N`$-body system is neglected. An improvement consists of replacing the decomposition (2) by the identity

$$\stackrel{~}{H}_N(m,g)=\frac{1}{N2}\underset{i}{}\stackrel{~}{H}_{N1}^{(i)}(\frac{N}{N1}m,g),$$
(4)
relating the translation-invariant Hamiltonians

$$\stackrel{~}{H}_N=H_N\frac{[𝐩_i]^2}{2Nm}$$
(5)
This leads to the new inequality

$$E_N(m,g)\frac{N}{N2}E_{N1}(\frac{N}{N1}m,g).$$
(6)
As $`Nm/(N1)`$ is smaller than $`(N1)m/(N2)`$ for $`N3`$, the bound (6) is better than (3), since any binding energy in a given potential is a decreasing function of the constituent mass.

By recursion, an inequality such as (3) or (6) provides a bound on $`E_N`$ in terms of the 2-body energy $`E_2`$. In the case of the harmonic oscillator for bosons, the bound derived from (6) is saturated, whereas the bound derived from (3) is by a factor $`\sqrt{2}`$ smaller than the exact result at large $`N`$.

Some numerical illustration of the inequality (6) for bosons is provided in Table I. Other examples are given in Ref. .

In the case of fermions, the bound (6) is not satisfactory. Indeed, it is not necessarily the ground state of $`\stackrel{~}{H}_{N1}`$ which is relevant, but the lowest state with quantum numbers compatible with the symmetry of the $`N`$-body state of interest. Thus looking at the structure of the wave function seems important to improve the inequalities.

Since our Hamiltonian acts in the orbital Hilbert space only, the behavior of the wave function with respect to the space variables has to be specified by an irreducible representation of the symmetry group SN. This corresponds to a partition $`[\lambda ]=[\lambda _1,\lambda _2,\mathrm{},\lambda _n]`$ of the $`N`$ particles defining an invariant orbital subspace spanned by orthogonal states which are associated to a Young tableau or a Yamanouchi symbol $`r`$ . Both specify the transformation under permutation, and the matrix element of any transposition operator $`P_{ij}`$ is known analytically. For example, in the case of three particles, we can have the following partitions

$$[3],[2,1],[1,1,1].$$
(7)
The first and the third ones are in the familiar symmetric and antisymmetric representations of dimension 1, respectively. The second one, of dimension 2, is the mixed symmetry representation spanned by the two states $`r=(2,1,1)`$ or $`r=(1,2,1)`$ which are respectively symmetric and antisymmetric in the exchange of particles 1 and 2.

Each orbital state $`|N,[\lambda ],r_\text{o}`$ must be associated with a similar state $`|N,[\overline{\lambda }],\overline{r}_\text{i}`$ for the intrinsic degrees of freedom such as spin, isospin, color, etc. The coupling of $`[\overline{\lambda }]`$ to $`[\lambda ]`$ gives a symmetric representation $`[N]`$ of SN for bosons or a fully antisymmetric representation $`[1^N]`$ for fermions. This implies that $`[\overline{\lambda }],\overline{r}`$ are identical to $`[\lambda ],r`$ when we are dealing with bosons, while for fermions, $`[\overline{\lambda }],\overline{r}`$ correspond to a Young tableau with rows and columns interchanged .

The SN Clebsch–Gordan coefficients $`[\lambda ]r[\lambda ]r|[N]`$ and $`[\lambda ]r[\overline{\lambda }]\overline{r}|[1^N]`$ are known explicitly , and the $`N`$-body state reads ($`ϵ=1`$ for bosons, $`1`$ for fermions)

$$|N,[\lambda ]_ϵ=d_{[\lambda ]}^{1/2}\underset{r}{}ϵ^\sigma |N,[\lambda ],r_\text{o}|N,[\overline{\lambda }],\overline{r}_\text{i},$$
(8)
where

$$d_{[\lambda ]}=N!\frac{\underset{1i<jn}{}(\lambda _i\lambda _j+ji)}{_{1in}(\lambda _i+ni)!}\text{,}$$
(9)
is the dimension of the representation $`[\lambda ]`$ and $`\sigma `$ is the number of permutations that have to been performed to obtain the Yamanouchi symbol from the normal one . To obtain the ($`N1`$)-body parts of state (8), one has now just to remove the $`N^{\text{th}}`$ particle in each symbol $`r`$, thus leading to a ($`N1`$)-Yamanouchi symbol that belongs to a different orbital symmetry $`[\lambda ]_p=[\lambda _1,\mathrm{},\lambda _{p1},\lambda _p1,\lambda _{p+1},\mathrm{},\lambda _n]`$, where $`p`$ is the row number of particle $`N`$ in the original Young tableau. Moreover, this new symbol needs $`a=_{q>p=1}^N\lambda _q`$ less permutations than $`r`$ to appear in the normal form. Hence the $`N`$-body wave function (8) can be rewritten as

$$\underset{p}{}\frac{d_{[\lambda ]_p}^{1/2}}{d_{[\lambda ]}^{1/2}}ϵ^a|(N1,[\lambda ]_p)_ϵ(1,[1])_{[\lambda ],ϵ},$$
(10)
with $`p`$ running over all the lines of $`[\lambda ]`$ where a box can be dropped. When this is used with the decomposition (4) of the Hamiltonian, it leads to a new and very general inequality

$$E_N^{[\lambda ]}(m,g)\frac{N}{N2}\underset{p}{}\frac{d_{[\lambda ]_p}}{d_{[\lambda ]}}E_{N1}^{[\lambda ]_p}(\frac{N}{N1}m,g).$$
(11)
If one considers, as a first application, a system of spinless bosons for which the orbital Young pattern $`[\lambda ]`$ is necessarily symmetric, the inequality (11) coincides with our previous result (6).

Consider now fermions with spin 1/2. The conjugate partition $`[\overline{\lambda }]`$ of $`[\lambda ]`$ is an irreducible representation of U$`(2)`$ and contains at most 2 rows which are related to the spin $`S`$ by the relations $`\overline{\lambda }_1+\overline{\lambda }_2=N`$ and $`\overline{\lambda }_1\overline{\lambda }_2=2S`$. Writing our inequality (11) with $`[\overline{\lambda }]`$ gives the following result: the ground state energy of $`N`$-spin 1/2 fermions with total spin $`S`$ is bound in terms of binding energies of $`(N1)`$-body systems with neighboring spins $`S\pm 1/2`$

$`E_N^S`$ $`(m,g){\displaystyle \frac{N1}{N(N2)(2S+1)}}\times `$ (14)
$`[S(N+2S+2)E_{N1}^{S1/2}(m,{\displaystyle \frac{Ng}{N1}})`$
$`+(S+1)(N2S)E_{N1}^{S+1/2}(m,{\displaystyle \frac{Ng}{N1}})]`$
The generalization is straightforward: the energetically favored state has the most symmetric space partition $`[\lambda ]`$ that admits a conjugate partition $`[\overline{\lambda }]`$ which can be a representation of U$`(\mathrm{\Omega })`$, where $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is the number of intrinsic degrees of freedom. As a result, $`[\overline{\lambda }]`$ has a maximum of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ rows and $`[\lambda ]=[\mathrm{\Omega }^\nu ,N\nu \mathrm{\Omega }]`$ for the $`N`$-body ground state with $`\nu `$ the integer part of $`N/\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Denoting by $`E_{N1}^0`$ the binding energy of ($`N1`$) particles with the favored orbital symmetry $`[\mathrm{\Omega }^\nu ,N\nu \mathrm{\Omega }1]`$ and by $`E_{N1}^1`$ the energy associated to the first excited partition $`[\lambda ]=[\mathrm{\Omega }^{\nu 1},\mathrm{\Omega }1,N\nu \mathrm{\Omega }]`$, the relation (11) takes the form

$`E_N`$ $`(m,g){\displaystyle \frac{N1}{N(N2)(1+\mathrm{\Omega }+\nu \mathrm{\Omega }N)}}\times `$ (17)
$`[(N\nu \mathrm{\Omega })(1+\mathrm{\Omega }+\nu +\nu \mathrm{\Omega }N)E_{N1}^0(m,{\displaystyle \frac{Ng}{N1}})`$
$`+\nu (\mathrm{\Omega }+1)(\mathrm{\Omega }+\nu \mathrm{\Omega }N)E_{N1}^1(m,{\displaystyle \frac{Ng}{N1}})]`$
We have calculated the lower bound and the exact energy with a selection of potentials, using the method of Gaussian expansion described for instance in Ref. . The variational parameters are determined by a stochastic optimization . The method has proved to be powerful and reliable.

In Table I, we show the ratio of the accurately computed energy to the lower bound for monotonic short-range potentials. For $`N=3`$ and $`S=1/2`$, each pair is in an equal-weight admixture of singlet and triplet, while $`S=3/2`$ involves only triplet states. For $`N=4`$ and $`S=0(2)`$, each 3-body subsystem has $`S=1/2(3/2)`$.

It appears from Table I that the bound is close to the exact result, especially for antisymmetric orbital wave functions ($`N=3`$, $`S=3/2`$ or $`N=4`$, $`S=2`$) and for deeply bound states.

The results in Fig. 1 correspond to power-law potentials $`r_{ij}^q`$ with $`q1`$. For comparison, we also display the bound by Lévy-Leblond , initially designed for large systems but also applicable at small $`N`$. The decomposition

$$H_N(m,g)=\frac{1}{2}\underset{i}{}\underset{ji}{}\left[\frac{𝐩_j^2}{(N1)m}+gV(r_{ji})\right]$$
(18)
expresses $`H_N`$ in terms of Hamiltonians with $`(N1)`$ independent particles. For fermions, one gets

$$E_N(m,g)\frac{N}{2}f_{N1}(m(N1),g),$$
(19)
where $`f_N`$ is the cumulated energy of a system of $`N`$ independent fermions, a notation borrowed from Ref. . In Eq. (19), the translation energy of the $`(N1)`$-body subsystem is neglected.

Also shown in Fig. 1 is the bound of Basdevant and Martin , who started from the identity

$$\underset{i}{}𝐩_i^2+𝐫_i^2=\frac{𝐏^2}{N}+N𝐑^2+T_\text{r}+\frac{1}{N}\underset{i<j}{}r_{ij}^2,$$
(20)
where $`𝐏`$ is the total momentum, $`𝐑`$ the center-of-mass position and $`T_\text{r}`$ the relative kinetic energy, and succeeded to generalize it in the form of inequalities when the power $`q=2`$ is replaced by another power $`q1`$. Then the Hamiltonian (1) or its translation-invariant part (5) with $`Vr_{ij}^q`$ is bounded (on both sides) by independent-particle Hamiltonians with a potential proportional to $`r_i^q`$. This leads to

$`E_N2^{\frac{q4}{q+2}}\left[N^{\frac{2}{q+2}}f_NN^{\frac{4q}{q+2}}E_2\right]`$ (21)
$`E_N2^{\frac{q}{q+2}}\left[N^{\frac{2}{q+2}}f_NN^{\frac{q}{q+2}}E_2\right],`$ (22)
for $`1q2`$. The inequalities are reversed for $`q2`$.

Clearly from Fig. 1, Basdevant and Martin always give the best bound near $`q=2`$, but their result quickly deteriorates when the potential departs from the harmonic case. Our inequality is saturated at $`q=2`$ for $`N=3`$ fermions and for some spin configurations of $`N=4`$, but saturation is lost at larger $`N`$. For small systems, our bound dramatically improves that of Lévy-Leblond.

Our result can be extended to more general Hamiltonians, for instance with spin–spin interaction or with external constraints. More details will be given elsewhere. Let us just mention that our bound can be applied to the “quantum dot” systems

$$H=\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{𝐩_i^2}{2m}+\frac{m\omega ^2}{2}𝐫_i^2+\underset{i<j}{}\frac{e^2}{r_{ij}}\text{,}$$
(23)
once the center-of-mass contribution (a mere harmonic oscillator) is removed. In the case of $`N=3`$ electrons with mass $`m=1`$ and charge $`e=1`$, one obtains, for $`S=3/2`$ and orbital momentum and parity $`L^P=1^+`$, a bound $`ϵ0.1668`$ if the oscillator frequency is $`\omega =0.01`$ and $`ϵ54.968`$ if $`\omega =10`$, to be compared to the exact values $`ϵ=0.1680`$ and $`ϵ=54.973`$. For $`N=4`$, $`S=2`$, $`L^P=0^{}`$, one obtains $`ϵ0.297`$ if $`\omega =0.01`$ and $`ϵ84.895`$ if $`\omega =10`$, close to the exact values $`ϵ=0.299`$ and $`ϵ=84.907`$. The bound is better for large $`\omega `$, as the system becomes a pure oscillator.

To conclude, we have derived a lower bound on the energy of $`N`$-fermion systems, which is independent of the shape of the potential. For small systems, it improves significantly a previous bound expressed in terms of $`(N1)`$ independent fermions.

Saturation is not always obtained for the harmonic oscillator. When our bound is iterated to express the $`N`$-body energy in terms of the 2-body energy, the correct large $`N`$ behavior is not reached. Thus there is still much room for improvement.

Acknowledgements. We would like to thank Ica Stancu, Jean-Louis Basdevant, André Martin and Piet van Isacker for very useful comments.