Properties of branes in curved spacetimes

• Main Authors: Kostas Skenderis, Marika Taylor
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.263.6157; http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0311079v1.pdf

A generic property of curved manifolds is the existence of focal points. We show that branes located at focal points of the geometry satisfy special properties. Examples of backgrounds to which our discussion applies are AdSm×S n and plane wave backgrounds. As an example, we show that a pair of AdS2 branes located at the north and south pole of the S 5 in AdS5×S 5 are half supersymmetric and that they are dual to a two-monopole solution of N = 4 SU(N) SYM theory. Our second example involves spacelike branes in the (Lorentzian) plane wave. We develop a modified lightcone gauge for the open string channel, analyze in detail the cylinder diagram and establish open-closed duality. In the new gauge the open string feels an inverted harmonic oscillator potential. When the branes are located at focal points of the geometry the amplitude acquires most of the characteristics of flat space amplitudes. In the open string channel the special properties are due to stringy modes that become massless. Contents 1