Bounds on curved domain walls in 5D gravity - art. no. 085003

We discuss maximally symmetric curved deformations of the flat domain wall solutions of five-dimensional dilaton gravity that appeared in a recent app roach to the cosmological constant problem. By analyzing the bulk field con figurations and the boundary conditions at a four-dimensional maximally sym metric curved domain wall, we obtain constraints on such solutions. For a s pecial dilaton coupling to the brane tension that appeared in recent works, we find no curved deformations, confirming and extending slightly a result of Akrani-Hamed et al. which was argued using a Z(2) symmetry of the solut ion. For more general dilaton-dependent brane tension, we find that the cur vature is bounded by the Kaluza-Klein scale in the fifth dimension.