New Class of Effective Field Theories from Embedded Branes

We present a new general class of four-dimensional effective field theories with interesting global symmetry groups. These theories arise from purely gravitational actions for (3 + 1)-dimensional branes embedded in higher dimensional spaces with induced gravity terms. The simplest example is the well known Galileon theory, with its associated Galilean symmetry, arising as the limit of a DGP brane world. However, we demonstrate that this is a special case of a much wider range of theories, with varying structures, but with the same attractive features such as second order equations. In some circumstances, these new effective field theories allow potentials for the scalar fields on curved space, with small masses protected by nonlinear symmetries. Such models may prove relevant to the cosmology of both the early and late universe.