$U(1)$ gauge vector field on a codimension-2 brane

Abstract

In this paper, we obtain a gauge invariant effective action for a bulk massless $U(1)$ gauge vector field on a brane with codimension two by using a general Kaluza-Klein (KK) decomposition for the field. It suggests that there exist two types of scalar KK modes to keep the gauge invariance of the action for the massive vector KK modes. Both the vector and scalar KK modes can be massive. The masses of the vector KK modes $m^{(n)}$ contain two parts, $m_{1}^{(n)}$ and $m_{2}^{(n)}$, due to the existence of the two extra dimensions. The masses of the two types of scalar KK modes $m_{\phi}^{(n)}$ and $m_{\varphi}^{(n)}$ are related to the vector ones, i.e., $m_{\phi}^{(n)}=m_{1}^{(n)}$ and $m_{\varphi}^{(n)}=m_{2}^{(n)}$. Moreover, we derive two Schr\"{o}dinger-like equations for the vector KK modes, for which the effective potentials are just the functions of the warp factor.