The Heterotic Dyonic Instanton

The static Yang-Mills-Higgs dyonic instanton is shown to have a non-vanishing, but anti-self-dual, angular momentum 2-form with skew eigenvalues equal to the electric charge; for large charge the angular momentum causes the instanton to expand into a hyper-spherical shell. A class of exact multi dyonic instantons is then found and then generalized to a new class of 1/4 supersymmetric, non-singular, stationary, exact solutions of the ten-dimensional supergravity/Yang-Mills theory. These self-gravitating dyonic instantons yield new heterotic string solitons, to leading order in the inverse string tension.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX, no figures. Previous revision was to include exact multi-solitons. Third version corrects typos and ADM energy formul

Stringy effects for spinning strings and the Bethe ansatz

The one-loop worldsheet corrections to spinning strings in the sl(2) subsector of AdS5 × S5 are compared to the quantum string Bethe ansatz. The evaluation of the energy shift is performed in two regimes: a) in the large limit, using zeta-function regularization and b) in the limit of large winding number. The first computation agrees with the Bethe ansatz in the first three orders while the second computation leads to a disagreement with the string Bethe ansatz prediction at leading order. Careful analysis of the zeta-function regularization shows, that in this approach perturbative as well as non-perturbative terms in the string sums are missed. Hence, this together with the result b), implies that the proposed quantum string Bethe equations do not reproduce all terms in the exact string result

Phases of kinky holographic nuclear matter

Holographic QCD at finite baryon number density and zero temperature is studied within the five-dimensional Sakai-Sugimoto model. We introduce a new approximation that models a smeared crystal of solitonic baryons by assuming spatial homogeneity to obtain an effective kink theory in the holographic direction. The kink theory correctly reproduces a first order phase transition to lightly bound nuclear matter. As the density is further increased the kink splits into a pair of half-kink constituents, providing a concrete realization of the previously suggested dyonic salt phase, where the bulk soliton splits into constituents at high density. The kink model also captures the phenomenon of baryonic popcorn, in which a first order phase transition generates an additional soliton layer in the holographic direction. We find that this popcorn transition takes place at a density below the dyonic salt phase, making the latter energetically unfavourable. However, the kink model predicts only one pop, rather than the sequence of pops suggested by previous approximations. In the kink model the two layers produced by the single pop form the surface of a soliton bag that increases in size as the baryon chemical potential is increased. The interior of the bag is filled with abelian electric potential and the instanton charge density is localized on the surface of the bag. The soliton bag may provide a holographic description of a quarkyonic phase

Linking Bäcklund and monodromy charges for strings on AdS₅ x S⁵

We find an explicit relation between the two known ways of generating an infinite set of local conserved charges for the string sigma model on AdS5 × S5: the Bäcklund and monodromy approaches. We start by constructing the two-parameter family of Bäcklund transformations for the string with an arbitrary world-sheet metric. We then show that only for a special value of one of the parameters the solutions generated by this transformation are compatible with the Virasoro constraints. By solving the Bäcklund equations in a non-perturbative fashion, we finally show that the generating functional of the Bäcklund conservation laws is equal to a certain sum of the quasi-momenta. The positions of the quasi-momenta in the complex spectral plane are uniquely determined by the real parameter of the Bäcklund transform

Geometry of the Nonabelian DBI Dyonic Instanton

We introduce a calculus of the Lie algebra valued functions present in Tseytlin's proposal for the nonabelian DBI action, and apply it to show that the recently found dyonic instanton is a solution of the full nonabelian DBI action. The geometry of this solution exhibits a new effect of ``blowing-up'' of the brane, which was not present in the case of the brane realisation of monopoles. We interpret this solution as the superposition of the D0 brane and fundamental string F1 which connects two separated D4 branes. Both F1 and D0 are delocalised in the ``blown-up'' region between two separated D4 branes.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures; v2: minor changes and added reference

Finite energy Dirac-Born-Infeld monopoles and string junctions

It is shown that the world volume field theory of a single D3-brane in a supergravity D3-brane background admits finite energy, and non-singular, Abelian monopoles and dyons preserving 1/2 or 1/4 of the N=4 supersymmetry and saturating a Bogomolnyi-type bound. The 1/4 supersymmetric solitons provide a world volume realization of string-junction dyons. We also discuss the dual M-theory realization of the 1/2 supersymmetric dyons as finite tension self-dual strings on the M5-brane, and of the 1/4 supersymmetric dyons as their intersections

On the maximal superalgebras of supersymmetric backgrounds

In this note we give a precise definition of the notion of a maximal superalgebra of certain types of supersymmetric supergravity backgrounds, including the Freund-Rubin backgrounds, and propose a geometric construction extending the well-known construction of its Killing superalgebra. We determine the structure of maximal Lie superalgebras and show that there is a finite number of isomorphism classes, all related via contractions from an orthosymplectic Lie superalgebra. We use the structure theory to show that maximally supersymmetric waves do not possess such a maximal superalgebra, but that the maximally supersymmetric Freund-Rubin backgrounds do. We perform the explicit geometric construction of the maximal superalgebra of AdS_4 x S^7 and find that is isomorphic to osp(1|32). We propose an algebraic construction of the maximal superalgebra of any background asymptotic to AdS_4 x S^7 and we test this proposal by computing the maximal superalgebra of the M2-brane in its two maximally supersymmetric limits, finding agreement.Comment: 17 page

Coordinate Bethe Ansatz for the String S-Matrix

We use the coordinate Bethe ansatz approach to derive the nested Bethe equations corresponding to the recently found S-matrix for strings in AdS5 x S5, compatible with centrally extended su(2|2) symmetry.Comment: 25 Pages, plain LaTeX, 4 Figures. Mostly added references, fixed typo

Tachyon condensation on brane sphalerons

We consider a sphaleron solution in field theory that provides a toy model for unstable D-branes of string theory. We investigate the tachyon condensation on a Dp-brane. The localized modes, including a tachyon, arise in the spectrum of a sphaleron solution of a \phi^4 field theory on M^{p+1}\times S^1. We use these modes to find a multiscalar tachyon potential living on the sphaleron world-volume. A complete cancelation between brane tension and the minimum of the tachyon potential is found as the size of the circle becomes small.Comment: To appear in JHEP, 13 pages, 2 eps figures, minor changes and references adde