Thermal description of braneworld effective theories

Low-energy effective theories provide the natural description of four-dimensional physics in higher-dimensional geometries, where the imprint of the bulk appears as parameters of the lower-dimensional theory. Motivated by the recent progress in the first-order thermodynamic formulation of modified gravity theories, we investigate the thermodynamics of effective theories in braneworld scenarios and thereby the attractor mechanism toward general relativity in such theories. We consider the 2-brane Randall-Sundrum model, where the low-energy theory on either brane is of scalar-tensor nature with the extradimensional radion playing the role of the scalar. We study the thermodynamic implications of a nonvanishing gravitational contribution to the radion potential, and further explore the dynamics in the presence of a bulk stabilizing field.