44 research outputs found
The problematic backreaction of SUSY-breaking branes
In this paper we investigate the localisation of SUSY-breaking branes which,
in the smeared approximation, support specific non-BPS vacua. We show, for a
wide class of boundary conditions, that there is no flux vacuum when the branes
are described by a genuine delta-function. Even more, we find that the smeared
solution is the unique solution with a regular brane profile. Our setup
consists of a non-BPS AdS_7 solution in massive IIA supergravity with smeared
anti-D6-branes and fluxes T-dual to ISD fluxes in IIB supergravity.Comment: 27 pages, Latex2e, 5 figure
Fractional branes, warped compactifications and backreacted orientifold planes
The standard extremal p-brane solutions in supergravity are known to allow
for a generalisation which consists of adding a linear dependence on the
world-volume coordinates to the usual harmonic function. In this note we
demonstrate that remarkably this generalisation goes through in exactly the
same way for p-branes with fluxes added to it that correspond to fractional
p-branes. We relate this to warped orientifold compactifications by trading the
Dp-branes for Op-planes that solve the RR tadpole condition. This allows us to
interpret the worldvolume dependence as due to lower-dimensional scalars that
flow along the massless directions in the no-scale potential. Depending on the
details of the fluxes these flows can be supersymmetric domain wall flows. Our
solutions provide explicit examples of backreacted orientifold planes in
compactifications with non-constant moduli.Comment: 20 pages, incl. references. v2: small changes required for JHEP
publication. v3: few equation typos correcte
Chiral matter wavefunctions in warped compactifications
We analyze the wavefunctions for open strings stretching between intersecting
7-branes in type IIB/F-theory warped compactifications, as a first step in
understanding the warped effective field theory of 4d chiral fermions. While in
general the equations of motion do not seem to admit a simple analytic
solution, we provide a method for solving the wavefunctions in the case of weak
warping. The method describes warped zero modes as a perturbative expansion in
the unwarped spectrum, the coefficients of the expansion depending on the
warping. We perform our analysis with and without the presence of worldvolume
fluxes, illustrating the procedure with some examples. Finally, we comment on
the warped effective field theory for the modes at the intersection.Comment: 64 pages, 1 figure. References updated, typos fixed, discussion on
varying dilaton case slightly modified. Version to appear in JHE
Theories of Class F and Anomalies
We consider the 6d (2,0) theory on a fibration by genus g curves, and
dimensionally reduce along the fiber to 4d theories with duality defects. This
generalizes class S theories, for which the fibration is trivial. The
non-trivial fibration in the present setup implies that the gauge couplings of
the 4d theory, which are encoded in the complex structures of the curve, vary
and can undergo S-duality transformations. These monodromies occur around 2d
loci in space-time, the duality defects, above which the fiber is singular. The
key role that the fibration plays here motivates refering to this setup as
theories of class F. In the simplest instance this gives rise to 4d N=4
Super-Yang-Mills with space-time dependent coupling that undergoes SL(2, Z)
monodromies. We determine the anomaly polynomial for these theories by pushing
forward the anomaly polynomial of the 6d (2,0) theory along the fiber. This
gives rise to corrections to the anomaly polynomials of 4d N=4 SYM and theories
of class S. For the torus case, this analysis is complemented with a field
theoretic derivation of a U(1) anomaly in 4d N=4 SYM. The corresponding anomaly
polynomial is tested against known expressions of anomalies for wrapped
D3-branes with varying coupling, which are known field theoretically and from
holography. Extensions of the construction to 4d N = 0 and 1, and 2d theories
with varying coupling, are also discussed.Comment: 54 pages, 1 figure, v2: added discussion of non-supersymmetric
extension, v3: version as appears in JHE
Fluxbranes: Moduli Stabilisation and Inflation
Fluxbrane inflation is a stringy version of D-term inflation in which two
fluxed D7-branes move towards each other until their (relative) gauge flux
annihilates. Compared to brane-antibrane inflation, the leading-order
inflationary potential of this scenario is much flatter. In the present paper
we first discuss a new explicit moduli stabilisation procedure combining the F-
and D-term scalar potentials: It is based on fluxed D7-branes in a geometry
with three large four-cycles of hierarchically different volumes. Subsequently,
we combine this moduli stabilisation with the fluxbrane inflation idea,
demonstrating in particular that CMB data (including cosmic string constraints)
can be explained within our setup of hierarchical large volume CY
compactifications. We also indicate how the eta-problem is expected to
re-emerge through higher-order corrections and how it might be overcome by
further refinements of our model. Finally, we explain why recently raised
concerns about constant FI terms do not affect the consistent, string-derived
variant of D-term inflation discussed in this paper.Comment: In section 3 an improved model is discusse