Geometry and cosmological perturbations in the bulk inflaton model

Abstract

We consider a braneworld inflation model driven by the dynamics of a scalar field living in the 5-dimensional bulk, the so-called ``bulk inflaton model'', and investigate the geometry in the bulk and large scale cosmological perturbations on the brane. The bulk gravitational effects on the brane are described by a projection of the 5-dimensional Weyl tensor, which we denote by $E_{μν}$. Focusing on a tachionic potential model, we take a perturbative approach in the anti-de Sitter (AdS$_5$) background with a single de Sitter brane. We first formulate the evolution equations for $E_{μν}$ in the bulk. Next, applying them to the case of a spatially homogeneous brane, we obtain two different integral expressions for $E_{μν}$. One of them reduces to the expression obtained previously when evaluated on the brane. The other is a new expression that may be useful for analyzing the bulk geometry. Then we consider superhorizon scale cosmological perturbations and evaluate the bulk effects onto the brane. In the limit $H^2\ell^2\ll1$, where $H$ is the Hubble parameter on the brane and $\ell$ is the bulk curvature radius, we find that the effective theory on the brane is identical to the 4-dimensional Einstein-scalar theory with a simple rescaling of the potential even under the presence of inhomogeneities. % atleast on super-Hubble horizon scales. In particular, it is found that the anticipated non-trivial bulk effect due to the spatially anisotropic part of $E_{μν}$ may appear only at %second order in the low energy expansion, i.e., at $O(H^4\ell^4)$.