Fractional D1-Branes at Finite Temperature

The supergravity dual of $N$ regular and $M$ fractional D1-branes on the cone over the Einstein manifold $Q^{1,1,1}$ has a naked singularity in the infrared. The supergravity dual of $N$ regular and $M$ fractional D3-branes on the conifold also has such a singularity. Buchel suggested and Gubser et al. have shown that in the D3-brane case, the naked singularity is cloaked by a horizon at a sufficiently high temperature. In this paper we derive the system of second-order differential equations necessary to find such a solution for $Q^{1,1,1}$. We also find solutions to this system in perturbation theory that is valid when the Hawking temperature of the horizon is very high.Comment: 22 pages, v2: minor change

More Anomalies from Fractional Branes

In this note we show how the anomalies of both pure and matter coupled N=1,2 supersymmetric gauge theories describing the low energy dynamics of fractional branes on orbifolds can be derived from supergravity.Comment: 11 pages, latex; v2: minor typos fixe

N=1 gauge superpotentials from supergravity

We review the supergravity derivation of some non-perturbatively generated effective superpotentials for N=1 gauge theories. Specifically, we derive the Veneziano-Yankielowicz superpotential for pure N=1 Super Yang-Mills theory from the warped deformed conifold solution, and the Affleck-Dine-Seiberg superpotential for N=1 SQCD from a solution describing fractional D3-branes on a C^3 / Z_2 x Z_2 orbifold.Comment: LaTeX, iopart class, 8 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of the workshop of the RTN Network "The quantum structure of space-time and the geometric nature of fundamental interactions", Copenhagen, September 2003; v2: published version with minor clarification

Fuzzy spaces and new random matrix ensembles

We analyze the expectation value of observables in a scalar theory on the fuzzy two sphere, represented as a generalized hermitian matrix model. We calculate explicitly the form of the expectation values in the large-N limit and demonstrate that, for any single kind of field (matrix), the distribution of its eigenvalues is still a Wigner semicircle but with a renormalized radius. For observables involving more than one type of matrix we obtain a new distribution corresponding to correlated Wigner semicircles.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure; version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Absorption by Threebranes and the AdS/CFT Correspondence

In the first part of this talk I discuss two somewhat different supergravity approaches to calculating correlation functions in strongly coupled Yang-Mills theory. The older approach relates two-point functions to cross-sections for absorption of certain incident quanta by threebranes. In this approach the normalization of operators corresponding to the incident particles is fixed unambiguously by the D3-brane DBI action. By calculating absorption cross-sections of all partial waves of the dilaton we find corresponding two-point functions at strong `t Hooft coupling and show that they are identical to the weak coupling results. The newer approach to correlation functions relates them to boundary conditions in AdS space. Using this method we show that for a certain range of negative mass-squared there are two possible operator dimensions corresponding to a given scalar field in AdS, and indicate how to calculate correlation functions for either of these choices. In the second part of the talk I discuss an example of AdS/CFT duality which arises in the context of type 0 string theory. The CFT on N coincident electric and magnetic D3-branes is argued to be stable for sufficiently weak `t Hooft coupling. It is suggested that its transition to instability at a critical coupling is related to singularity of planar diagrams.Comment: 14 pages, LaTeX; Talk at Strings '99, Potsdam, German

On the Moduli Space of the Cascading SU(M+p)xSU(p) Gauge Theory

We carry out a thorough analysis of the moduli space of the cascading gauge theory found on p D3-branes and M wrapped D5-branes at the tip of the conifold. We find various mesonic branches of the moduli space whose string duals involve the warped deformed conifold with different numbers of mobile D3-branes. The branes that are not mobile form a BPS bound state at threshold. In the special case where p is divisible by M there also exists a one-dimensional baryonic branch whose family of supergravity duals, the resolved warped deformed conifolds, was constructed recently. The warped deformed conifold is a special case of these backgrounds where the resolution parameter vanishes and a Z_2 symmetry is restored. We study various brane probes on the resolved warped deformed conifolds, and successfully match the results with the gauge theory. In particular, we show that the radial potential for a D3-brane on this space varies slowly, suggesting a new model of D-brane inflation.Comment: 55 pages, 8 figures; v2: minor corrections; v3: added comments in section 1