Branon stabilization from fermion-induced radiative corrections

We consider a 3-brane embedded in 5-dimensional spacetime characterized by a Gaussian warp factor, for which the four-dimensional effective theory for brane fluctuations (branons) is unstable. We show that radiative corrections arising from fermions living on the brane, and therefore coupled to branons, stabilize the system by generating dynamically a spontaneous symmetry breaking for the branon field. The price to pay, for the corresponding mechanism to be consistent, is to have a large number of fermion flavours, and we discuss the fat brane scenario as an interpretation for the dressed branon theory, taking into account the Maxwell construction, which avoids the spinodal instability present in the perturbative effective potential.