Lorentz violation in brane cosmology, accelerated expansion and fundamental constants

The notion of Lorentz violation in four dimensions is extended to a 5-dimensional brane-world scenario by utilizing a dynamical vector field assumed to point in the bulk direction, with Lorentz invariance holding on the brane. The cosmological consequences of this theory consisting of the time variation in the gravitational coupling $G$ and cosmological term $\Lambda_4$ are explored. The brane evolution is addressed by studying the generalized Friedmann and Raychaudhuri equations. The behavior of the expansion scale factor is then considered for different possible scenarios where the bulk cosmological constant is zero, positive or negative.