Novel modulus stabilization mechanism in higher dimensional f(R) Gravity

In this work, we obtain a new warped solution for a 5-dimensional $f(R)$ gravity in an anti de-Sitter bulk. The higher curvature term in the gravity action is shown to modify the usual warped metric. The novel feature of this modification leads to a natural geometric stabilization of the modulus/radion field in the underlying effective theory on the visible 3-brane without the need for any external stabilizing field. It is further shown that the stabilized value of the modulus resolves the well-known gauge hierarchy problem without any unnatural fine-tuning of the model parameters. This new solution also opens up the possibilities of new signatures in various scenarios formulated in the backdrop of higher dimensional space-time.