Avoiding the dangers of a soft-wall singularity

We critically analyse the nature of the infrared singularity in Randall-Sundrum soft-wall models, where the extra dimension is dynamically compactified by the formation of a curvature singularity. Due to the Israel junction conditions, this singularity can only be shielded by a time-independent black-hole horizon if there is ghost matter on the UV brane. For this construction the spectrum of 4D states is shown to be similar to the original soft-wall case. We point out, however, that no such shielding is needed, as the singularity satisfies unitary boundary conditions.