Boundary Conditions in Brane-World Supergravity

Abstract

Bulk supergravity on a manifold with boundary must be supplemented by boundary conditions that preserve local supersymmetry. This "downstairs" picture has certain advantages over the equivalent "upstairs" picture, expressed in terms of orbifolds. In particular, Scherk-Schwarz supersymmetry breaking can be described much more simply in the downstairs picture. Nevertheless, physics on the fundamental domain can always be lifted upstairs, so long as fields are allowed to be discontinuous across the boundary. In this talk we apply these considerations to five-dimensional supergravity in a warped Randall-Sundrum background.