Layered Higgs Phase as a Possible Field Localisation on a Brane

So far it has been found by using lattice techniques that in the anisotropic five– dimensional Abelian Higgs model, a layered Higgs phase exists in addition to the expected five–dimensional one. The exploration of the phase diagram has shown that the two Higgs phases are separated by a phase transition from the confining phase. This transition is known to be first order. In this paper we explore the possibility of finding a second order transition point in the critical line which separates the first order phase transition from the crossover region. This is shown to be the case only for the four– dimensional Higgs layered phase whilst the phase transition to the five–dimensional broken phase remains first order. The layered phase serves as the possible realisation of four–dimensional spacetime dynamics which is embedded in a five–dimensional spacetime. These results are due to gauge and scalar field localisation by confining interactions along the extra fifth direction. E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected]