Quintessence and brane world scenarios

We discuss the possibility of quintessence in the dilatonic domain walls including the Randall-Sundrum brane world. We obtain the zero mode effective action for gravitating objects in the dilatonic domain wall. First we consider the four-dimensional (4D) gravity and the Brans-Dicke graviscalar with a potential. This can be further rewritten as a minimally coupled scalar with the Liouville-type potential in the Einstein frame. However this model fails to induce the quintessence on the dilatonic domain wall because the potential is negative. Second we consider the 4D gravity with the dilaton. In this case we also find a negative potential. Any negative potential gives us negative energy density and positive pressure, which does not lead to an accelerating universe. Consequently it turns out that the zero mode approach of the dilatonic domain wall cannot accommodate the quintessence in cosmology.