Strong brane gravity and the radion at low energies

For the two-brane Randall-Sundrum model, we calculate the bulk geometry for strong gravity, in the low matter density regime, for slowly varying matter sources. This is relevant for astrophysical or cosmological applications. The warped compactification means the radion cannot be written as a homogeneous mode in the orbifold coordinate, and we introduce it by extending the coordinate patch approach of the linear theory to the non-linear case. The negative tension brane is taken to be in vacuum. For conformally invariant matter on the positive tension brane, we solve the bulk geometry as a derivative expansion, formally summing the 'Kaluza-Klein' contributions to all orders. For general matter we compute the Einstein equations to leading order, finding a scalar-tensor theory with omega(Psi) proportional to Psi/(1 - Psi), and geometrically interpret the radion. We comment that this radion scalar may become large in the context of strong gravity with low density matter. Equations of state allowing (rho - 3P) to be negative, can exhibit behaviour where the matter decreases the distance between the two branes, which we illustrate numerically for static star solutions using an incompressible fluid. For increasing stellar density, the branes become close before the upper mass limit, but after violation of the dominant energy condition. This raises the interesting question of whether astrophysically reasonable matter, and initial data, could cause branes to collide at low energy, such as in dynamical collapse.