Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in the Bulk as a Localization Mechanism of Fields on the Brane

Abstract

We consider real and complex scalar fields non-minimally coupled to gravity in the bulk spacetime and study their impact on the brane upon acquiring a non-vanishing vacuum expectation value. When examining the case of the complex scalar field, a minimally coupled U(1) gauge field is also considered so that spontaneous symmetry breaking can take place. Particular attention is paid to the terms arising from the junction conditions, which act towards reinforcing the mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking. We find that the embedding of a braneworld universe in a bulk spacetime endowed with matter fields can induce this mechanism at very high energies, which implies the localization on the brane of the bulk fields.