Mass Gaps and Braneworlds -- In Memory of Peter Freund

Understand

Remembering the foundational contributions of Peter Freund to supergravity, and especially to the problems of dimensional compactification, reduction is considered with a non-compact space transverse to the lower dimensional theory.

• The known problem of a continuum of Kaluza-Klein states is avoided here by the occurrence of a mass gap between a single normalizable zero-eigenvalue transverse wavefunction and the edge of the transverse state continuum.
• This style of reduction does not yield a formally consistent truncation to the lower dimensional theory, so developing the lower-dimensional effective theory requires integrating out the Kaluza-Klein states lying above the mass gap.