10.1 Supersymmetric Large Extra Dimensions (SLED) Model
This is a supersymmetric version of the Einstein–Maxwell model [72
] (see [57, 58, 59, 247] for
reviews). The bosonic part of the action is given by [3, 4, 2]
There exists a solution where the dilaton
is constant,
. The solution for the 6D spacetime is
given by
The gauge field is taken to consist of magnetic flux threading the extra dimensional space so that the field
strength takes the form
where
is a constant,
is the determinant of
and
is the antisymmetric tensor normalized
as
. All other components of
vanish. A static and stable solution is obtained by choosing the
extra-dimensional space to be a two-sphere
The magnetic field strength
and the radius
are fixed by the cosmological constant
The constant value
is determined by the condition that the potential for
has minimum [153
]
This is exactly the condition to have a flat geometry on the brane (see Equation (441))
Thus without tuning the 6D cosmological constant, it is possible to obtain a flat 4D spacetime.
Now we add branes to this solution [72
]. The brane action is given by
The solution for the extra dimensions is now given by
where
The coordinate
ranges from
to
. Thus the effect of the brane makes a deficit angle
in the bulk (see Figure 27). This is a 6D realization of the ADD model including the
self-gravity of branes. An interesting property of this model is that regardless of the tension of the brane,
the 4D specetime on the brane is flat. Thus this could solve the cosmological constant problem – any
vacuum energy on the brane only changes a geometry of the extra-dimensions and does not
curve the 4D spacetime. This idea of solving the cosmological constant problem is known as
self-tuning.
We should note that there have been several objections to the idea of self-tuning [153, 419
, 420
].
Consider that a phase transition occurs and the tension of the brane changes from
to
.
Accordingly,
changes from
to
. The magnetic flux is
conserved as the gauge field strength is a closed form,
. Then the magnetic flux which
is obtained by integrating the field strength over the extra dimensions should be conserved
The relation between
and
, Equation (441), that ensures the existence of Minkowski branes
cannot be imposed both for
and
when
unless
changes. Moreover,
the quantization condition must be imposed on the flux
. What happens is that a modulus, which is a
combination of
and the radion describing the size of extra-dimension, acquires a runaway potential and
the 4D spacetime becomes non-static.
An unambiguous way to investigate this problem is to study the dynamical solutions directly in the 6D
spacetime. However, once we consider the case where the tension becomes time dependent, we encounter a
difficulty to deal with the branes [419
]. This is because for co-dimension 2 branes, we encounter a
divergence of metric near the brane if we put matter other than tension on a brane. Hence, without
specifying how we regularize the branes, we cannot address the question what will happen if we
change the tension. Is the self-tuning mechanism at work and does it lead to another static
solution? Or do we get a dynamical solution driven by the runaway behaviour of the modulus
field?
There was a negative conclusion on the self-tuning in this supersymmetric model for a particular kind of
regularization [419
, 420
]. However, the answer could depend on the regularization of branes and the jury
remains out. It is important to study the time-dependent dynamics in the 6D spacetime and the
regularization of the branes in detail [410, 60, 62, 411, 61, 33, 110, 338, 350, 100].