Massive Gravity on a Non-extremal Brane

We consider a brane world scenario which arises as the near-horizon region of a non-extremal D5-brane. There is a quasi-localized massive graviton mode, as well as harmonic modes of higher mass which are bound to the brane to a lesser degree. Lorentz invariance is slightly broken, which may have observable effects due to the leakage of the metastable graviton states into the bulk. Unlike a brane world arising from an extremal D5-brane, there is no mass gap. We also find that a brane world arising from a non-extremal M5/M5-brane intersection has the same graviton dynamics as that of a non-extremal D5-brane. This is evidence that a previously conjectured duality relation between the dual quantum field theories of each p-brane background may hold away from extremality.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, LaTe

Ultimate Fate of Constrained Voters

We determine the ultimate fate of individual opinions in a socially-interacting population of leftists, centrists, and rightists. In an elemental interaction between agents, a centrist and a leftist can become both centrists or both become leftists with equal rates (and similarly for a centrist and a rightist). However leftists and rightists do not interact. This interaction step between pairs of agents is applied repeatedly until the system can no longer evolve. In the mean-field limit, we determine the exact probability that the system reaches consensus (either leftist, rightist, or centrist) or a frozen mixture of leftists and rightists as a function of the initial composition of the population. We also determine the mean time until the final state is reached. Some implications of our results for the ultimate fate in a limit of the Axelrod model are discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, 2-column revtex format; for submission to J. Phys. A. Final version for JPA; very minor change

S^1-wrapped D3-branes on Conifolds

We construct a D3-brane wrapped on S^1, which is fibred over the resolved conifold as its transverse space. Whereas a fractional D3-brane on the resolved conifold is not supersymmetric and has a naked singularity, our solution is supersymmetric and regular everywhere. We also consider an $S^1$-wrapped D3-brane on the resolved cone over T^{1,1}/Z_2, as well as on the deformed conifold. In the former case, we obtain a regular supergravity dual to a certain four-dimensional field theory whose Lorentz and conformal symmetries are broken in the IR region and restored in the UV limit.Comment: Latex, 14 pages, minor correction

Penrose Limits of Non-standard Brane Intersections

The non-standard intersection of two 5-branes and a string can give rise to AdS_3\times S^3\times S^3\times S^1. We consider the Penrose limit of this geometry and study the supersymmetry of the resulting pp-wave solution. There is a one-parameter family of Penrose limits associated with the orthogonal rotation of the two foliating circles within the two 3-spheres. Supernumerary Killing spinors arise only when the rotation angle is 45 degrees, for which case we obtain the corresponding light-cone string action that has linearly-realised supersymmetry. We also obtain Penrose limits of other non-standard intersections that give rise to the product of AdS_3 or AdS_2 and two spheres. The resulting pp-waves are supported by multiple constant field strengths.Comment: Latex, 15 pages, references adde

Non-singular Twisted S-branes From Rotating Branes

We show that rotating p-brane solutions admit an analytical continuation to become twisted Sp-branes. Although a rotating p-brane has a naked singularity for large angular momenta, the corresponding S-brane configuration is regular everywhere and exhibits a smooth bounce between two phases of Minkowski spacetime. If the foliating hyperbolic space of the transverse space is of even dimension, such as for the twisted SM5-brane, then for an appropriate choice of parameters the solution smoothly flows from a warped product of two-dimensional de Sitter spacetime, five-dimensional Euclidean space and a hyperbolic 4-space in the infinite past to Minkowski spacetime in the infinite future. We also show that non-singular S-Kerr solutions can arise from higher-dimensional Kerr black holes, so long as all (all but one) angular momenta are non-vanishing for even (odd) dimensions.Comment: Latex, 20 page