Thermal description of braneworld effective theories

Abstract

Low-energy effective theories provide the natural description of four-dimensional physics in higher-dimensional geometries, where the imprint of the bulk appears as parameters of the lower dimensional theory. Motivated by the recent progress in the first-order thermodynamic formulation of modified gravity theories, we investigate the thermodynamics of effective theories in braneworld scenarios and thereby the attractor mechanism towards general relativity in such theories. We consider the two-brane Randall-Sundrum model where the low-energy theory on either brane is of scalar-tensor nature with the extra-dimensional radion playing the role of the scalar. We study the thermodynamic implications of a non-vanishing gravitational contribution to the radion potential, and further explore the dynamics in the presence of a bulk stabilizing field.