Gravity and antigravity in a brane world with metastable gravitons : Comment on hep-th/0002190 and hep-th/0003020

In the framework of a five-dimensional three-brane model with quasi-localized gravitons we evaluate metric perturbations induced on the positive tension brane by matter residing thereon. We find that at intermediate distances, the effective four-dimensional theory coincides, up to small corrections, with General Relativity. This is in accord with Csaki, Erlich and Hollowood and in contrast to Dvali, Gabadadze and Porrati. We show, however, that at ultra-large distances this effective four-dimensional theory becomes dramatically different: conventional tensor gravity changes into scalar anti-gravity.Comment: 6 pages revtex, tex corrected, this paper should be read in tandem with hep-th/000207

Towards a Unified Theory of Massless Superfields of All Superspins

We describe the ``universal'' action for massless superfields of all superspins in N = 1, D = 4 anti-de Sitter superspace as a gauge theory of unconstrained superfields taking their values in the commutative algebra of analytic functions over a one-sheeted hyperboloid in $R^{3,1}$. The action is invariant under N = 2 supersymmetry transformations which form a closed algebra off the mass-shell.Comment: 12 pages, LaTe

Quasi-localized states on noncommutative solitons

We consider noncommutative gauge theories which have zero mass states propagating along both commutative and noncommutative dimensions. Solitons in these theories generically carry U(m) gauge group on their world-volume. From the point of view of string theory, these solitons correspond to ``branes within branes''. We show that once the world-volume U(m) gauge theory is in the Higgs phase, light states become quasi-localized, rather than strictly localized on the soliton, i.e. they mix with light bulk modes and have finite widths to escape into the noncommutative dimensions. At small values of U(m) symmetry breaking parameters, these widths are small compared to the corresponding masses. Explicit examples considered are adjoint scalar field in the background of a noncommutative vortex in U(1)-Higgs theory, and gauge fields in instanton backgrounds in pure gauge noncommutative theories.Comment: 27 pages, references and comments added, final version to appear in JHE

Ultra-large distance modification of gravity from Lorentz symmetry breaking at the Planck scale

We present an extension of the Randall--Sundrum model in which, due to spontaneous Lorentz symmetry breaking, graviton mixes with bulk vector fields and becomes quasilocalized. The masses of KK modes comprising the four-dimensional graviton are naturally exponentially small. This allows to push the Lorentz breaking scale to as high as a few tenth of the Planck mass. The model does not contain ghosts or tachyons and does not exhibit the van Dam--Veltman--Zakharov discontinuity. The gravitational attraction between static point masses becomes gradually weaker with increasing of separation and gets replaced by repulsion (antigravity) at exponentially large distances.Comment: 28 page