Abstract
We discuss a model of a conformal p-brane interacting with the world volume metric and connection. The purpose of the model is to suggest a mechanism by which gravity coupled to p-branes leads to the formation of structure rather than homogeneity in spacetime. Furthermore, we show that the formation of structure is accompanied by the appearance of a multivalued cosmological constant, i.e., one which may take on different values in different domains, or cells, of spacetime. The above results apply to a broad class of nonlinear gravitational Lagrangians as long as metric and connection on the p-brane manifold are treated as independent variables.
- Received 7 September 1994
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.51.4410
©1995 American Physical Society