Effective theories and black hole production in warped compactifications

We investigate aspects of the four-dimensional effective description of brane world scenarios based on warped compactification on anti-de Sitter space. The low-energy dynamics is described by visible matter gravitationally coupled to a ``dark'' conformal field theory. We give the linearized description of the 4d stress tensor corresponding to an arbitrary 5d matter distribution. In particular a 5d falling particle corresponds to a 4d expanding shell, giving a 4d interpretation of a trajectory that misses a black hole only by moving in the fifth dimension. Breakdown of the effective description occurs when either five-dimensional physics or strong gravity becomes important. In scenarios with a TeV brane, the latter can happen through production of black holes near the TeV scale. This could provide an interesting experimental window on quantum black hole dynamics.