English

Causal Structure and Gravitational Waves in Brane World Cosmology

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-11-10 v3 Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The causal structure of the flat brane universe of RSII type is re-investigated to clarify the boundary conditions for stochastic gravitational waves. In terms of the Gaussian normal coordinate of the brane, a singularity of the equation for gravitational waves appears in the bulk. We show that this singularity corresponds to the ``seam singularity'' which is a singular subspace on the brane universe. Based upon the causal structure, we discuss the boundary conditions for gravitational waves in the bulk. Introducing a null coordinate, we propose a numerical procedure to solve gravitational waves with appropriate boundary conditions and show some examples of our numerical results. This procedure could be also applied in scalar type perturbations. The problem in the choice of the initial condition for gravitational waves is briefly discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/0310282,
  title  = {Causal Structure and Gravitational Waves in Brane World Cosmology},
  author = {Kiyotomo Ichiki and Kouji Nakamura},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0310282},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

9 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in PRD; this version includes the referee's suggestions and expanded discussion on our numerical scheme

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:19:48.446Z