Spherically Symmetric Thick Branes in Vacuum

Abstract

We consider a spherical thick 3-brane immersed in a five-dimensional bulk spacetime. We demonstrate how the thick brane equation of motion expanded in powers of the thickness of the brane can be obtained from the expected junction conditions on the boundaries of thick brane with the two embedding spacetimes. It is shown that the finite thickness leads to a faster collapse of the spherical shell.