The dynamics of the Goldstone bosons on the brane

We study, within the recently proposed brane-world scenario, the effective action for the low-energy brane excitations. These modes are understood as Goldstone bosons associated to the spontaneous isometry breaking, induced on the bulk space by the presence of the brane. Starting from the Nambu-Goto action for the brane, we obtain a non-lineal sigma model describing the low-energy interactions of the Goldstone bosons and extend the calculation up to O(p(4)). We also discuss the Higgs-like mechanism in which the Kaluza-Klein gauge fields absorb the Goldstone bosons and acquire mass. Finally, we present the explicit Form of the effective action describing the low-energy interactions between the three-brane Goldstone bosons and the particles present in the Standard Model. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.