Einstein gravity on the codimension 2 brane?

Paul Bostock, Ruth Gregory, Ignacio Navarro, Jose Santiago

Published 2003-11-10, updated 2004-06-03Version 2

We look at general braneworlds in six-dimensional Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity. We find the general matching conditions for the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet braneworld, which remarkably turn out to give precisely the four-dimensional Einstein equations for the induced metric and matter on the brane, even when the extra dimensions are non-compact and have infinite volume. We also show that relaxing regularity of the curvature in the vicinity of the brane, or alternatively having a finite width brane, gives rise to an additional possible correction to the Einstein equations, which contains information on the brane's embedding in the bulk and cannot be determined from knowledge of the braneworld alone. We comment on the advantages and disadvantages of each possibility, and the relevance of these results regarding a possible solution of the cosmological constant problem.