Mirage effects on the brane

We discuss features of the brane cosmological evolution that arise through the presence of matter in the bulk. As these deviations from the conventional evolution are not associated with some observable matter component on the brane, we characterize them as mirage effects. We review an example of expansion that can be attributed to mirage nonrelativistic matter (mirage cold dark matter) on the brane. The real source of the evolution is an anisotropic bulk fluid with negative pressure along the extra dimension. We also study the general problem of exchange of real nonrelativistic matter between the brane and the bulk, and discuss the related mirage effects. Finally, we derive the brane cosmological evolution within a bulk that contains a global monopole (hedgehog) configuration. This background induces a mirage curvature term in the effective Friedmann equation, which can cause a brane universe with positive spatial curvature to expand forever.