Gauge field localization on brane worlds

We consider the effects of spacetime curvature and brane thickness on the localization of gauge fields on a brane via kinetic terms induced by localized fermions. We find that in a warped geometry with an infinitely thin brane, both the infrared and the ultraviolet behavior of the electromagnetic propagator are affected, providing a more stringent bound on the brane's tension than that coming from the requirement of four-dimensional gravity on the brane. On the other hand, for a thick wall in a flat spacetime, where the fermions are localized by means of a Yukawa coupling, we find that four-dimensional electromagnetism is recovered in a region bounded from above by the same critical distance appearing in the thin case, but also from below by a new scale related to the brane's thickness and the electromagnetic couplings. This imposes very stringent bounds on the brane's thickness which seem to invalidate the localization mechanism for this case.