Embedding General Relativity with varying cosmological constant term in five-dimensional Brans-Dicke theory of gravity in vacuum

Abstract

We investigate the possibility to recover a four-dimensional (4D) general theory of relativity, as embedded in a 5D spacetime where gravity is governed by a five-dimensional (5D) Brans-Dicke (BD) theory of gravity. Employing the Gauss-Codazzi-Ricci equations and some ideas of the induced matter theory, we obtain that when the 5D BD scalar field is only depending of the extra coordinate, it is possible to recover on every generic 4D hypersurface the usual Einstein field equations plus a cosmological constant term, with matter sources described by the energy-momentum tensor of induced matter and where the cosmological constant under certain conditions can vary with time. Finally to illustrate the formalism, we give an example in which we induced a cosmological constant from warped product spaces.