Black Holes in Cascading Theories: Confinement/Deconfinement Transition and other Thermal Properties

We present numerical evidence for a transition between the Klebanov-Strassler background and a solution describing a black hole in the class of cascading solutions in the chirally restored phase. We also present a number of properties of this solution, including the running of the coupling constant, the viscosity to entropy ratio and the drag force on a quark moving in this background.Comment: 34 pages, 7 figures. Version to be published by JHE

Supersymmetry Breaking from a Calabi-Yau Singularity

We conjecture a geometric criterion for determining whether supersymmetry is spontaneously broken in certain string backgrounds. These backgrounds contain wrapped branes at Calabi-Yau singularites with obstructions to deformation of the complex structure. We motivate our conjecture with a particular example: the $Y^{2,1}$ quiver gauge theory corresponding to a cone over the first del Pezzo surface, $dP_1$. This setup can be analyzed using ordinary supersymmetric field theory methods, where we find that gaugino condensation drives a deformation of the chiral ring which has no solutions. We expect this breaking to be a general feature of any theory of branes at a singularity with a smaller number of possible deformations than independent anomaly-free fractional branes.Comment: 32 pages, 6 figures, latex, v2: minor changes, refs adde

Cascading Quivers from Decaying D-branes

We use an argument analogous to that of Kachru, Pearson and Verlinde to argue that cascades in L^{a,b,c} quiver gauge theories always preserve the form of the quiver, and that all gauge groups drop at each step by the number M of fractional branes. In particular, we demonstrate that an NS5-brane that sweeps out the S^3 of the base of L^{a,b,c} destroys M D3-branes.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure; v2: references adde

Supersymmetric Branes on AdS_5 x Y^{p,q} and their Field Theory Duals

We systematically study supersymmetric embeddings of D-brane probes of different dimensionality in the AdS_5xY^{p,q} background of type IIB string theory. The main technique employed is the kappa symmetry of the probe's worldvolume theory. In the case of D3-branes, we recover the known three-cycles dual to the dibaryonic operators of the gauge theory and we also find a new family of supersymmetric embeddings. The BPS fluctuations of dibaryons are analyzed and shown to match the gauge theory results. Supersymmetric configurations of D5-branes, representing domain walls, and of spacetime filling D7-branes (which can be used to add flavor) are also found. We also study the baryon vertex and some other embeddings which break supersymmetry but are nevertheless stable.Comment: LaTeX, 2 figures, 54 pages; v2: discussions sharpened at several points, new subsection and references adde

Supersymmetric probes on the conifold

We study the supersymmetric embeddings of different D-brane probes in the AdS_5 x T^{1,1} geometry. The main tool employed is kappa symmetry and the cases studied include D3-, D5- and D7-branes. We find a family of three-cycles of the T^{1,1} space over which a D3-brane can be wrapped supersymmetrically and we determine the field content of the corresponding gauge theory duals. Supersymmetric configurations of D5-branes wrapping a two-cycle and of spacetime filling D7-branes are also found. The configurations in which the entire T^{1,1} space is wrapped by a D5-brane (baryon vertex) and a D7-brane are also studied. Some other embeddings which break supersymmetry but are nevertheless stable are also determined.Comment: 44 pages, LaTeX; v2: typos corrected, references added, discussion of D5-brane embeddings improve

Baryonic Response of Dense Holographic QCD

The response function of a homogeneous and dense hadronic system to a time-dependent (baryon) vector potential is discussed for holographic dense QCD (D4/D8 embedding) both in the confined and deconfined phases. Confined holographic QCD is an uncompressible and static baryonic insulator at large N_c and large \lambda, with a gapped vector spectrum and a massless pion. Deconfined holographic QCD is a diffusive conductor with restored chiral symmetry and a gapped transverse baryonic current. Similarly, dense D3/D7 is diffusive for any non-zero temperature at large N_c and large \lambda. At zero temperature dense D3/D7 exhibits a baryonic longitudinal visco-elastic mode with a first sound speed \lambda/\sqrt{3} and a small width due to a shear viscosity to baryon ratio \eta/n_B=\hbar/4. This mode is turned diffusive by arbitrarily small temperatures, a hallmark of holography.Comment: V2: 47 pages, 7 figures, references added, typos correcte

Holographic Meson Melting

The plasma phase at high temperatures of a strongly coupled gauge theory can be holographically modelled by an AdS black hole. Matter in the fundamental representation and in the quenched approximation is introduced through embedding D7-branes in the AdS-Schwarzschild background. Low spin mesons correspond to the fluctuations of the D7-brane world volume. As is well known by now, there are two different kinds of embeddings, either reaching down to the black hole horizon or staying outside of it. In the latter case the fluctuations of the D7-brane world volume represent stable low spin mesons. In the plasma phase we do not expect mesons to be stable but to melt at sufficiently high temperature. We model the late stages of this meson melting by the quasinormal modes of D7-brane fluctuations for the embeddings that do reach down to the horizon. The inverse of the imaginary part of the quasinormal frequency gives the typical relaxation time back to equilibrium of the meson perturbation in the hot plasma. We briefly comment on the possible application of our model to quarkonium suppression.Comment: 25+1 pages, 6 figures; v4: references adde

Adding flavour to the Polchinski-Strassler background

As an extension of holography with flavour, we analyze in detail the embedding of a D7-brane probe into the Polchinski-Strassler gravity background, in which the breaking of conformal symmetry is induced by a 3-form flux G_3. This corresponds to giving masses to the adjoint chiral multiplets. We consider the N=2 supersymmetric case in which one of the adjoint chiral multiplets is kept massless while the masses of the other two are equal. This setup requires a generalization of the known expressions for the backreaction of G_3 in the case of three equal masses to generic mass values. We work to second order in the masses to obtain the embedding of D7-brane probes in the background. At this order, the 2-form potentials corresponding to the background flux induce an 8-form potential which couples to the worldvolume of the D7-branes. We show that the embeddings preserve an SU(2) x SU(2) symmetry. We study possible embeddings both analytically in a particular approximation, as well as numerically. The embeddings preserve supersymmetry, as we investigate using the approach of holographic renormalization. The meson spectrum associated to one of the embeddings found reflects the presence of the adjoint masses by displaying a mass gap.Comment: LaTeX, 50 pages, 9 figure

The discontinuous nature of chromospheric activity evolution

Chromospheric activity has been thought to decay smoothly with time and, hence, to be a viable age indicator. Measurements in solar type stars in open clusters seem to point to a different conclusion: chromospheric activity undergoes a fast transition from Hyades level to that of the Sun after about 1 Gyr of main--sequence lifetime and any decaying trend before or after this transition must be much less significant than the short term variations.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, to be published in Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Marginal Deformations with U(1)^3 Global Symmetry

We generate new 11-dimensional supergravity solutions from deformations based on U(1)^3 symmetries. The initial geometries are of the form AdS_4 x Y_7, where Y_7 is a 7-dimensional Sasaki-Einstein space. We consider a general family of cohomogeneity one Sasaki-Einstein spaces, as well as the recently-constructed cohomogeneity three L^{p,q,r,s} spaces. For certain cases, such as when the Sasaki-Einstein space is S^7, Q^{1,1,1} or M^{1,1,1}, the deformed gravity solutions correspond to a marginal deformation of a known dual gauge theory.Comment: 28pp; Refs. added and to appear in JHE