Decaying Cosmological Constant of the Inflating Branes in the Randall-Sundrum -Oda Model

We examine the issue of the cosmological constant in the $many$ $inflating$ branes scenario, extending on two recent models by I.Oda and Randall-Sundrum. The exact solution in a closed form is found in the slow roll approximation of the radion. Defining an effective expansion rate, which depends on the location of each brane in the fifth dimension and demanding stability for this case we show that each positive tension brane has a localized, decaying cosmological constant (the opposite process applies to the negative energy branes [4]) . The reason is that the square of the effective expansion rate enters as a source term in the Einstein equations for the branes.Thus the brane has two scale factors depending on time and the fifth dimnesion respectively .The brane will roll along the fifth dimension in order to readjust its effective expansion rate in such a way that it compensates for its internal energy changes due to inflation and possible phase transitions.Comment: 9 pages, comments and ref.added, solution replaced with the exact one, submitted to PR

Type 0 Brane Inflation from Mirage Cosmology

We consider a three-dimensional brane-universe moving in a Type 0 String background. The motion induces on the brane a cosmological evolution which, for some range of the parameters, exhibits an inflationary phase.Comment: 11 pages, latex, one figur

Brane Induced Gravity: Codimension-2

We review the results of arXiv:hep-th/0703190, on brane induced gravity (BIG) in 6D. Among a large diversity of regulated codimension-2 branes, we find that for near-critical tensions branes live inside very deep throats which efficiently compactify the angular dimension. In there, 4D gravity first changes to 5D, and only later to 6D. The crossover from 4D to 5D is independent of the tension, but the crossover from 5D to 6D is not. This shows how the vacuum energy problem manifests in BIG: instead of tuning vacuum energy to adjust the 4D curvature, generically one must tune it to get the desired crossover scales and the hierarchy between the scales governing the 4D \to 5D \to 6D transitions. In the near-critical limit, linearized perturbation theory remains under control below the crossover scale, and we find that linearized gravity around the vacuum looks like a scalar-tensor theory.Comment: 16 pages latex, 2 .eps figs, based on the talks given at the "Sowers Workshop", Virginia Tech, May 14-18, 2007, "Cosmology and Strings" workshop at ICTP, Trieste, Italy, July 9-13, 2007, "Dark Energy In the Universe", Hakone, Japan, Sep 1-4, 2007 and "Zagreb Workshop 2007", Zagreb, Croatia, Nov 9-11, 2007; v2: added reference

Probing Gravity with Spacetime Sirens

A gravitational observatory such as LISA will detect coalescing pairs of massive black holes, accurately measure their luminosity distance and help identify a host galaxy or an electromagnetic counterpart. If dark energy is a manifestation of modified gravity on large scales, gravitational waves from cosmologically-distant spacetime sirens are direct probes of this new physics. For example, a gravitational Hubble diagram based on black hole pair luminosity distances and host galaxy redshifts could reveal a large distance extra-dimensional leakage of gravity. Various additional signatures may be expected in a gravitational signal propagated over cosmological scales.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Braneworlds and Dark Energy

In the Randall-Sundrum scenario, we analyse the dynamics of an AdS5 braneworld when conformal matter fields propagate in five dimensions. We show that conformal fields of weight -4 are associated with stable geometries which describe the dynamics of inhomogeneous dust, generalized dark radiation and homogeneous polytropic dark energy on a spherically symmetric 3-brane embedded in the compact AdS5 orbifold. We discuss aspects of the radion stability conditions and of the localization of gravity in the vicinity of the brane.Comment: 12 pages, latex, 3 eps figures. Talk given at the Seventh Workshop on Quantum Field Theory under the Influence of External Conditions, IEEC, CSIC and University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, 5-9 September 2005. Revised version published in the workshop proceedings, J. Phys. A: Mathematical and General. Typos corrected and some changes introduced for clarit

Cosmological Solution in M-theory on S^1/Z_2

We provide the first example of a cosmological solution of the Horava-Witten supergravity. This solution is obtained by exchanging the role of time with the radial coordinate of the transverse space to the five-brane soliton. On the boundary this corresponds to rotating an instanton solution into a tunneling process in a space with Lorentzian signature, leading to an expanding universe. Due to the freedom to choose different non-trivial Yang-Mills backgrounds on the boundaries, the two walls of the universe ( visible and hidden worlds) expand differently. However at late times the anisotropy is washed away by gravitational interactions.Comment: 10 pages, latex, no figur

String cosmology versus standard and inflationary cosmology

This paper presents a review of the basic, model-independent differences between the pre-big bang scenario, arising naturally in a string cosmology context, and the standard inflationary scenario. We use an unconventional approach in which the introduction of technical details is avoided as much as possible, trying to focus the reader's attention on the main conceptual aspects of both scenarios. The aim of the paper is not to conclude in favour either of one or of the other scenario, but to raise questions that are left to the reader's meditation. Warnings: the paper does not contain equations, and is not intended as a complete review of all aspects of string cosmology.Comment: 22 pages, Latex (IOP Style), three figures included using epsfig. To appear in Class. Quantum Grav. (Topical Review Section). Two misprints correcte