No-go theorems on localization of gravity around higher codimensional branes in noncompact extra dimensions

Abstract

Abstract We study the brane world scenario of a single brane (or a single stack of branes) with codimension higher than one. When the extra dimensions are not small, localization of gravity around the brane is needed in order to reproduce the observable four-dimensional gravity. We focus on the case of noncompact extra dimensions, where the possibility of localized gravity becomes non-trivial. We show that in large class of gravity models, localization of massless gravity is not possible for codimension-2 branes with at least one noncompact extra dimension. With additional mild assumptions on field backgrounds, we also show that it is not possible for higher codimensional branes with two or more noncompact extra dimensions.