Rotational Graviton Modes in the Brane World

For a brane world embedded in various ten or eleven-dimensional geometries, we calculate the corrections to the four-dimensional gravitational potential due to graviton modes propagating in the extra dimensions, including those rotating around compact directions. Due to additional "warp" factors, these rotation modes may have as significant an effect as the s-wave modes which propagate in the large or infinite extra dimension.Comment: 9 pages, LaTe

Black Five-Branes and Fluxbranes on Gravitational Instantons

We apply a U-duality based solution-generating technique to construct supergravity solutions which describe nonextremal D5-branes and fluxbranes on various gravitational instantons. This includes an F7-brane wrapped on a sphere, which remains weakly-coupled in the asymptotic region. We construct various superpositions of nonextremal D5-branes and fluxbranes that have angular momentum fixed by the parameters associated with their mass and two magnetic charges.Comment: 14 pages, added references, an additional commen

Gravitational Lorentz Violations from M-Theory

In an attempt to bridge the gap between M-theory and braneworld phenomenology, we present various gravitational Lorentz-violating braneworlds which arise from p-brane systems. Lorentz invariance is still preserved locally on the braneworld. For certain p-brane intersections, the massless graviton is quasi-localized. This also results from an M5-brane in a C-field. In the case of a p-brane perturbed from extremality, the quasi-localized graviton is massive. For a braneworld arising from global AdS_5, gravitons travel faster when further in the bulk, thereby apparently traversing distances faster than light.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX, references added, minor corrections and addition

Strongly-Coupled Quarks and Colorful Black Holes

We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to study the behavior of strongly-coupled quarks in a black hole background. The supergravity background consists of a six-dimensional Schwarzschild-black string AdS soliton, for which the bulk horizon extends from the AdS boundary down to an infra-red floor. By going to higher energy scales, the regime of validity of the classical supergravity background can be extended closer to the singularity than might be expected from the four-dimensional perspective. Small black holes potentially created by the Large Hadron Collider could typically carry color charges inherited from their parton progenitors. The dynamics of quarks near such a black hole depends on the curved spacetime geometry as well as the strong interaction with the color-charged black hole. We study the resulting behavior of quarks and compute the rate at which a quark rotating around the black hole loses energy. We also investigate how the interaction between a quark and an antiquark is altered by the presence of the black hole, which results in a screening length.Comment: Proceedings of the DPF-2011 Conference, 8 pages, 5 figures, added reference

Brane Resolution Through Fibration

We consider p-branes with one or more circular directions fibered over the transverse space. The fibration, in conjunction with the transverse space having a blown-up cycle, enables these p-brane solutions to be completely regular. Some such circularly-wrapped D3-brane solutions describe flows from SU(N)^3 N=2 theory, F_0 theory, as well as an infinite family of superconformal quiver gauge theories, down to three-dimensional field theories. We discuss the operators that are turned on away from the UV fixed points. Similarly, there are wrapped M2-brane solutions which describe smooth flows from known three-dimensional supersymmetric Chern-Simons matter theories, such as ABJM theory. We also consider p-brane solutions on gravitational instantons, and discuss various ways in which U-duality can be applied to yield other non-singular solutions.Comment: 35 pages, additional referenc

Open Wilson Lines and Chiral Condensates in Thermal Holographic QCD

We investigate various aspects of a proposal by Aharony and Kutasov arXiv:0803.3547 [hep-th] for the gravity dual of an open Wilson line in the Sakai-Sugimoto model or its non-compact version. In particular, we use their proposal to determine the effect of finite temperature, as well as background electric and magnetic fields, on the chiral symmetry breaking order parameter. We also generalize their prescription to more complicated worldsheets and identify the operators dual to such worldsheets.Comment: 45 pages, 18 figures; added reference

Singly-spinning black rings in D = 5 U(1)3 supergravity

We construct black ring solutions in five-dimensional U(1)3supergravity which carry three dipole charges, three electric charges and one angular momentum parameter.These solutions are written in a form that is sufficiently compact that their global and thermodynamic properties can be studied explicitly. In particular, we find that the Smarrformula is obeyed regardless of whether or not conical singularities are present, where as the first law of thermodynamics holds only in the absence of conical singularities. We also present black ring solutions with three background magnetic fields

Solar Radiation Pressure and Deviations from Keplerian Orbits

Newtonian gravity and general relativity give exactly the same expression for the period of an object in circular orbit around a static central mass. However, when the effects of the curvature of spacetime and solar radiation pressure are considered simultaneously for a solar sail propelled satellite, there is a deviation from Kepler's third law. It is shown that solar radiation pressure affects the period of this satellite in two ways: by effectively decreasing the solar mass, thereby increasing the period, and by enhancing the effects of other phenomena, rendering some of them detectable. In particular, we consider deviations from Keplerian orbits due to spacetime curvature, frame dragging from the rotation of the sun, the oblateness of the sun, a possible net electric charge of the sun, and a very small positive cosmological constant.Comment: 4 pages, minor typo corrected, additional comment

Escape Trajectories of Solar Sails and General Relativity

General relativity can have a significant impact on the long-range escape trajectories of solar sails deployed near the sun. Spacetime curvature in the vicinity of the sun can cause a solar sail traveling from 0.01 AU to 2550 AU to be deflected by as much as one million kilometers, and should therefore be taken into account at the beginning of the mission. There are a number of smaller general relativistic effects, such as frame dragging due to the slow rotation of the sun which can cause a deflection of more than one thousand kilometers.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Proceedings of the Sixth IAA Symposium on Realistic Near-Term Advanced Scientific Space Missions. Missions to the Outer Solar System and Beyond, pp. 67-72, Aosta, Italy, 6-9 July, 200