Gravitational Aspects of a Conformally Coupled Field Theory in Five Space-Time Dimensions

Where a field with broken symmetry is coupled to the scalar curvature of the underlying space-time, we may expect, in general, that the resulting effective Newtonian gravitational constant is dependent upon the vacuum state of the field theory. Except in regions of large space-time curvature or high temperature, physical field theories in four dimensions predict only negligible vacuum contributions to the Newtonian constant whereas in the higher-dimensional model considered here, this is not the case. We discover also that both the Newtonian and the cosmological constants may be influenced by the presence of an electromagnetic field.