Short distance modifications to Newton's law in SUSY braneworld scenarios

Abstract

In braneworld models coming from string theory one generally encounters massless scalar degrees of freedom -moduli- parameterizing the volume of small compact extra-dimensions. Here we discuss the effects of such moduli on Newton's law for a fairly general 5-D supersymmetric braneworld scenario with a bulk scalar field $\varphi$. We show that the Newtonian potential describing the gravitational interaction between two bodies localized on the visible brane picks up a non-trivial contribution at short distances that depends on the shape of the superpotential $W(\varphi )$ of the theory. In particular, we compute this contribution for dilatonic braneworld scenarios $W(\varphi )=e^{\alpha \varphi }$ (where $\alpha$ is a constant) and discuss the particular case of 5-D Heterotic M-theory.

Comments: Contribution to the Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Particles, Strings and Cosmology, PASCOS-07