Anomaly Inflow on Orientifold Planes

We examine some six-dimensional orientifold models with $N = 1$ supersymmetry, which can be realised as intersecting 7-branes and 7-planes. These models are studied in the light of recent work showing that orientifold planes carry anomalous gravitational couplings on their world-volume. We show that gravitational anomalies can be locally cancelled by these new couplings at every point in the internal space, under the assumption that the anomaly residing on orientifold planes is distributed in a particular way among brane-plane and plane-plane intersections.Comment: harvmac, 12 pages (b); Some changes in wording, in order to convey more accurately what is being done; no changes in computations or formula

BPS Nature of 3-String Junctions

We study BPS-saturated classical solutions for the world-sheet theory of a D-string in the presence of a point charge. These solutions are interpreted as describing planar 3-string junctions, which arise because the original D-string is deformed by the presence of the inserted charge. We compute the angles of the junctions and show that the vector sum of string tensions is zero, confirming a conjecture of Schwarz that such configurations are BPS states.Comment: 7 pages, harvmac (b), 3 figure

Brane mapping under (−1)FL(-1)^{F_L}

We present the evidence that $(-1)^{F_L}$ is a nonperturbative symmetry of Type II string theory. We argue that $(-1)^{F_L}$ is a symmetry of string theory as much as the $SL(2, Z)$ of the Type II string is and how the branes are mapped under the $(-1)^{F_L}$ modding. NS branes are mapped into the NS branes with the same world volume dimensions but with the different chiral structure. Supersymmetric Dp-branes (bound with anti-Dp branes) are mapped to unstable nonsupersymmetric Dp-branes, which has D(p-1)-branes as kink solutions according to Horava.Comment: 6 pages, interpretation of the boundary state mapping in terms of D-branes is clarified and a reference adde

Brane Constructions, Fractional Branes and Anti-deSitter Domain Walls

Compactifications of type IIB string theory on AdS5 x X5, where X5 is an Einstein space, can have one-fourth or half maximal supersymmetry for certain choices of X5. Some of these theories admit exotic domain walls arising from 5-branes wrapping 2-cycles in X5. We explore the relationship among these domain walls, fractional branes and branes stretched on intervals. World-volume fluxes in the wrapped branes play an important role in the analysis. We draw some parallels between the AdS background with exotic domain walls and N=1 supersymmetric MQCD, and identify other extended objects on the AdS side in the dual brane construction. The process of brane creation is used to give an alternate derivation of the relationship between fractional branes and branes on intervals.Comment: harvmac, 34 pages (b), 8 figures; Reference adde

A Note on the Stringy Embeddings of Certain N = 2 Dualities

Seiberg-Witten theory can be embedded in F-theory using D3 branes probing an orientifold geometry. The non-perturbative corrections in the orientifold picture map directly to the instanton corrections in the corresponding gauge theory that convert the classical moduli space to the quantum one. In this short review we argue that the recently proposed class of conformal Gaiotto models may also be embedded in F-theory. The F-theory constructions help us not only to understand the Gaiotto dualities but also to extend to the non-conformal cases with and without cascading behaviors. For the conformal cases, the near horizon geometries in F-theory capture both the UV and IR behaviors succinctly.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX, Based on the talk given by K. D at the Theory Canada Conference June 2012; v2: Typos corrected and references adde

Noncommutative Tachyons

When unstable Dp-branes in type II string theory are placed in a B-field, the resulting tachyonic world-volume theory becomes noncommutative. We argue that for large noncommutativity parameter, condensation of the tachyon as a noncommutative soliton leads to new decay modes of the Dp-brane into (p-2)-brane configurations, which we interpret as suitably smeared BPS D(p-1)-branes. Some of these configurations are metastable. We discuss various generalizations of this decay process.Comment: 15 pages, harvmac (b