Chiral fermions, orbifolds, scalars, and fat branes

Abstract

We note that orbifold boundary conditions that produce chiral fermion zero modes in compactified higher dimensional theories may distort scalar field vacuum expectation values, giving rise to nontrivial dependence on the extra dimensions. We illustrate this in a simple five dimensional model which has chiral fermion zero-modes stuck to fat branes. The model could provide a simple and explicit realization of the separation of quarks and leptons in the fifth dimension. We discuss the KK expansion in some detail. We find that there are in general non-zero-mode states stuck to the brane, like the chiral zero modes. We see explicitly the transition from states dominated by the internal structure of the fat brane to those dominated by the compactification.