Contact terms, symmetries and D-instantons

The scattering of NS-NS antisymmetric tensor states in the presence of D-instantons in type IIB superstring theory is studied. It is shown that in order to preserve gauge invariance, spacetime supersymmetry and picture changing symmetry the inclusion of boundary contact terms for closed string antisymmetric tensor vertex operators is necessary.Comment: 18 pages, Late

D-branes in the light-cone gauge and broken symmetries

Boundary states for D-branes are constructed using the light cone gauge. The D-brane breaks half the spacetime supersymmetry giving rise to fermionic zero modes living on the brane. The nonlinear realization of the broken supersymmetry on the open string degrees of freedom is analysed and the influence of boundary terms coming from closed string vertex operators is discussed.Comment: 8 pages, Latex, uses sprocl.sty, Contribution to the workshop "Gauge Theories, Applied Supersymmetry and Quantum Gravity", London, Imperial College, July 199

A note on heterotic/type I' duality and D0 brane quantum mechanics

In this note a simple calculation of one loop threshold corrections for the SO(32) heterotic string is performed. In particular the compactification on T^2 with a Wilson line breaking the gauge group to SO(16) x SO(16) is considered. Using heterotic type I duality, these corrections can be related to quantities appearing in the quantum mechanics of type I' D0 particles.Comment: 16 pages, harvmac, no figures, v2: references added, typos and eq. (4.16) corrected, v3: typos fixed and one reference added, version to appear in JHE

From p-branes to fluxbranes and back

In this note we study aspects of the interplay between fluxbranes and p-branes. We describe how a fluxbrane can be physically realized as a limit of a brane-antibrane configuration, in a manner similar to the way a uniform electric field appears in between the plates of a capacitor. We also study the evolution of a fluxbrane after nucleation of p-branes. We find that Kaluza-Klein fluxbranes do relax by forming brane-antibrane pairs or spherical branes, but we also find that for fluxtubes with dilaton coupling in a different range, the field strength does not relax, instead it becomes stronger after each nucleation bounce. We speculate on a possible runaway instability of such fluxtubes an an eventual breakdown of their classical description.Comment: 19 pages, harvmac(b), no figure

Relating AdS6_6 solutions in type IIB supergravity

In this note we show that the IIB supergravity solutions of the form AdS$_6\times M_4$ found by Apruzzi et al. are related to the local solutions found by D'Hoker et al. We also discuss how the global regular solutions found by D'Hoker et al. are mapped to the parameterization of Apruzzi et al.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure

Holographic Entropy and Calabi's Diastasis

The entanglement entropy for interfaces and junctions of two-dimensional CFTs is evaluated on holographically dual half-BPS solutions to six-dimensional Type 4b supergravity with m anti-symmetric tensor supermultiplets. It is shown that the moduli space for an N-junction solution projects to N points in the Kaehler manifold SO(2,m)/( SO(2) x SO(m)). For N=2 the interface entropy is expressed in terms of the central charge and Calabi's diastasis function on SO(2,m)/(SO(2) x SO(m)), thereby lending support from holography to a proposal of Bachas, Brunner, Douglas, and Rastelli. For N=3, the entanglement entropy for a 3-junction decomposes into a sum of diastasis functions between pairs, weighed by combinations of the three central charges, provided the flux charges are all parallel to one another or, more generally, provided the space of flux charges is orthogonal to the space of unattracted scalars. Under similar assumptions for N>3, the entanglement entropy for the N-junction solves a variational problem whose data consist of the N central charges, and the diastasis function evaluated between pairs of N asymptotic AdS_3 x S^3 regions.Comment: 34 pages, 3 figure

Conformal Defect Solutions in N=2,D=4N=2,D=4 Gauged Supergravity

We consider conformal defect solutions in four dimensional $N=2$ gauged supergravity. These solutions are constructed as a warped product of $AdS_2\times S^1$ over an interval with non-trivial electric and magnetic fields. We show for minimal gauged supergravity and for gauged supergravity with vector multiplets and abelian gauging that supersymmetric defect solutions are only possible when the geometry has a conical defect in either the bulk or the boundary metric.Comment: 20 pages, no figure

The charge radius of a Dpbrane

Sen has shown that tachyon condensation in Dbrane-anti-Dbrane configurations can lead to remarkable connections between string theories. A consequence of his results is that there is a minimal value of the radial coordinate $r_{c} \propto \sqrt{\alpha'} (gN)^{1/(9-p)}$ such that N units of D$p$brane charge cannot be localized to values smaller than $r_{c}.$ At this value of $r_{c}$ the curvature and the gradient of the Ramond-Ramond field strength are of order $1/\alpha',$ and the vacuum, regarded as a Dbrane-anti-Dbrane configuration with a tachyon condensate, is rendered unstable, leading to a separation of the Dbrane and the anti-Dbrane. This value of $r_{c}$ lies in the region intermediate between the near-horizon regime and the asymptotic regime for Dbrane classical solutions for small $g$. This vacuum stability bound on the curvature can be interpreted as an uncertainty relation for Dbrane charge.Comment: 5 Pages, Revtex, no figures, revised version to appear in JHE