679 research outputs found
Dynein structure and power stroke
Dynein ATPases are microtubule motors that are critical to diverse processes such as vesicle transport and the beating of sperm tails; however, their mechanism of force generation is unknown. Each dynein comprises a head, from which a stalk and a stem emerge. Here we use electron microscopy and image processing to reveal new structural details of dynein c, an isoform from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii flagella, at the start and end of its power stroke. Both stem and stalk are flexible, and the stem connects to the head by means of a linker approximately 10 nm long that we propose lies across the head. With both ADP and vanadate bound, the stem and stalk emerge from the head 10 nm apart. However, without nucleotide they emerge much closer together owing to a change in linker orientation, and the coiled-coil stalk becomes stiffer. The net result is a shortening of the molecule coupled to an approximately 15-nm displacement of the tip of the stalk. These changes indicate a mechanism for the dynein power stroke
Emergent Quantum Near-Criticality from Baryonic Black Branes
We find new black 3-brane solutions describing the "conifold gauge theory" at
nonzero temperature and baryonic chemical potential. Of particular interest is
the low-temperature limit where we find a new kind of weakly curved
near-horizon geometry; it is a warped product AdS_2 x R^3 x T^{1,1} with warp
factors that are powers of the logarithm of the AdS radius. Thus, our solution
encodes a new type of emergent quantum near-criticality. We carry out some
stability checks for our solutions. We also set up a consistent ansatz for
baryonic black 2-branes of M-theory that are asymptotic to AdS_4 x Q^{1,1,1}.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures; v2 discussion of entropy revised, minor changes;
v3 note added, minor improvements, version published in JHE
Absorption on horizon-wrapped branes
We compute the absorption cross section of space-time scalars on a static D2
rane, in global coordinates, wrapped on the S^2 of an AdS_2 X S^2 X CY_3
geometry. We discuss its relevance for the construction of the dual quantum
mechanics of Calabi-Yau black holes.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figure
Finite-Temperature Fractional D2-Branes and the Deconfinement Transition in 2+1 Dimensions
The supergravity dual to N regular and M fractional D2-branes on the cone
over \mathbb{CP}^3 has a naked singularity in the infrared. One can resolve
this singularity and obtain a regular fractional D2-brane solution dual to a
confining 2+1 dimensional N = 1 supersymmetric field theory. The confining
vacuum of this theory is described by the solution of Cvetic, Gibbons, Lu and
Pope. In this paper, we explore the alternative possibility for resolving the
singularity - the creation of a regular horizon. The black-hole solution we
find corresponds to the deconfined phase of this dual gauge theory in three
dimensions. This solution is derived in perturbation theory in the number of
fractional branes. We argue that there is a first-order deconfinement
transition. Connections to Chern--Simons matter theories, the ABJM proposal and
fractional M2-branes are presented.Comment: v3: analytic solutions are expose
Assessing a candidate IIA dual to metastable supersymmetry-breaking
We analyze the space of linearized non-supersymmetric deformations around a
IIA solution found by Cvetic, Gibbons, Lu and Pope (CGLP) in hep-th/0101096. We
impose boundary conditions aimed at singling out among those perturbations
those describing the backreaction of anti-D2 branes on the CGLP background. The
corresponding supergravity solution is a would-be dual to a metastable
supersymmetry-breaking state. However, it turns out that this candidate bulk
solution is inevitably riddled with IR divergences of its flux densities and
action, whose physical meaning and implications for models of string cosmology
call for further investigation.Comment: 33 pages. v2: reference added, clarifications in the introductio
A scalar field condensation instability of rotating anti-de Sitter black holes
Near-extreme Reissner-Nordstrom-anti-de Sitter black holes are unstable
against the condensation of an uncharged scalar field with mass close to the
Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. It is shown that a similar instability afflicts
near-extreme large rotating AdS black holes, and near-extreme hyperbolic
Schwarzschild-AdS black holes. The resulting nonlinear hairy black hole
solutions are determined numerically. Some stability results for (possibly
charged) scalar fields in black hole backgrounds are proved. For most of the
extreme black holes we consider, these demonstrate stability if the ``effective
mass" respects the near-horizon BF bound. Small spherical
Reissner-Nordstrom-AdS black holes are an interesting exception to this result.Comment: 34 pages; 13 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
Branes and fluxes in special holonomy manifolds and cascading field theories
We conduct a study of holographic RG flows whose UV is a theory in 2+1
dimensions decoupled from gravity, and the IR is the N=6,8 superconformal fixed
point of ABJM. The solutions we consider are constructed by warping the
M-theory background whose eight spatial dimensions are manifolds of special
holonomies sp(1) times sp(1) and spin(7). Our main example for the spin(7)
holonomy manifold is the A8 geometry originally constructed by Cvetic, Gibbons,
Lu, and Pope. On the gravity side, our constructions generalize the earlier
construction of RG flow where the UV was N=3 Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons matter
system and are simpler in a number of ways. Through careful consideration of
Page, Maxwell, and brane charges, we identify the discrete and continuous
parameters characterizing each system. We then determine the range of the
discrete data, corresponding to the flux/rank for which the supersymmetry is
unbroken, and estimate the dynamical supersymmetry breaking scale as a function
of these data. We then point out the similarity between the physics of
supersymmetry breaking between our system and the system considered by
Maldacena and Nastase. We also describe the condition for unbroken
supersymmetry on class of construction based on a different class of spin(7)
manifolds known as B8 spaces whose IR is different from that of ABJM and
exhibit some interesting features.Comment: 51 pages, 12 figures. Update in quantization of G4 on B8 in equations
(5.12) and (5.13
Holographic Renormalization of general dilaton-axion gravity
We consider a very general dilaton-axion system coupled to Einstein-Hilbert
gravity in arbitrary dimension and we carry out holographic renormalization for
any dimension up to and including five dimensions. This is achieved by
developing a new systematic algorithm for iteratively solving the radial
Hamilton-Jacobi equation in a derivative expansion. The boundary term derived
is valid not only for asymptotically AdS backgrounds, but also for more general
asymptotics, including non-conformal branes and Improved Holographic QCD. In
the second half of the paper, we apply the general result to Improved
Holographic QCD with arbitrary dilaton potential. In particular, we derive the
generalized Fefferman-Graham asymptotic expansions and provide a proof of the
holographic Ward identities.Comment: 42 pages. v2: two references added. Version published in JHEP. v3:
fixed minor typos in eqs. (1.6), (2.3), (3.20), (A.3), (B.8), (B.12) and
(B.22
Holographic and Wilsonian Renormalization Groups
We develop parallels between the holographic renormalization group in the
bulk and the Wilsonian renormalization group in the dual field theory. Our
philosophy differs from most previous work on the holographic RG; the most
notable feature is the key role of multi-trace operators. We work out the forms
of various single- and double-trace flows. The key question, `what cutoff on
the field theory corresponds to a radial cutoff in the bulk?' is left
unanswered, but by sharpening the analogy between the two sides we identify
possible directions.Comment: 31 pages, 3 figures. v2: Minor clarifications. Added reference
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