Born-Infeld Action from Supergravity

We consider the present absence of 31 out of 32 supersymmetric solutions in supergravity i.e., of solutions describing BPS preons. A recent result indicates that (bosonic) BPS preonic solutions do not exist in type IIB supergravity. We reconsider this analysis by using the G-frame method, extend it to the IIA supergravity case, and show that there are no (bosonic) preonic solutions for type IIA either. For the classical D=11 supergravity no conclusion can be drawn yet, although the negative IIA results permit establishing the conditions that preonic solutions would have to satisfy. For supergravities with `stringy' corrections, the existence of BPS preonic solutions remains fully open.

In this notes, we derive the component on-shell action of the space-filling D2-brane, i.e. N = 1, d = 3 supersymmetric Born-Infeld action within the nonlinear realization approach. The Bianchi identity admits direct covariantization with respect to the broken N = 1, d = 3 supersymmetry. In the corresponding on-shell component action all fermionic terms combine into covariant, with respect to broken supersymmetry, objects: covariant derivatives and fierbein and therefore the D2-brane component action has very simple form. Similarly to the cases of p-branes, it mimics the bosonic Born-Infeld action.

Superstrata are smooth horizonless microstate geometries for the supersymmetric D1-D5-P black hole in type IIB supergravity. In the CFT, “superstratum states” are defined to be the component of the supergraviton gas that is obtained by breaking the CFT into “|00〉-strands” and acting on each strand with the “small,” anomaly-free superconformal generators. We show that the recently-constructed supercharged superstrata represent a final and crucial component for the construction of the supergravity dual of a generic superstratum state and how the supergravity solution faithfully represents all the coherent superstratum states of the CFT. For the supergravity alone, this shows that generic superstrata do indeed fluctuate as functions of three independent variables. Smoothness of the complete supergravity solution also involves “coiffuring constraints” at second-order in the fluctuations and we describe how these lead to new predictions for three-point functions in the dual CFT. We use a hybrid of the original and supercharged superstrata to construct families of single-mode superstrata that still have free moduli after one has fixed the asymptotic charges of the system. We also study scalar wave perturbations in a particular family of such solutions and show that the mass gap depends on the free moduli. This can have interesting implications for superstrata at non-zero temperature.

Signature reversal invariance

We provide further evidence that the recently constructed warped AdS6 solutions in Type IIB supergravity are dual to 5d SCFTs that correspond to (p, q) 5-brane webs with large numbers of like-charged external 5-branes. We study a number of specific examples, including the TN theory, and identify the bulk states dual to a class of operators with mathcal{O} (N) scaling dimensions in terms of strings and string-webs embedded in the solutions.

We analyze general mathcal{N}=2 supersymmetric AdS4 solutions of type IIB supergravity. Utilizing a set of pure spinor equations directly adapted to mathcal{N}=2 , the necessary and sufficient conditions for supersymmetry are reduced to a concise system of partial differential equations for two functions which determine the solutions. We show that using this system analytic solutions can be generated, thus potentially expanding the rather limited set of known AdS4 solutions in type IIB supergravity.

We apply nonabelian equivariant localization techniques to Yang-Mills theory on the fuzzy sphere to write the partition function entirely as a sum over local contributions from critical points of the action. The contributions of the classical saddle-points are evaluated explicitly, and the partition function of ordinary Yang-Mills theory on the sphere is recovered in the commutative limit.

Multiparametric families of nonsupersymmetric EAdS4 flows as well as asymptotically EAdS4 solitons and wormholes are constructed within the four-dimensional SO(8) gauged supergravity that describes the compactification of M-theory on S7. More concretely, the solutions are found within the so-called STU model that describes the U(1)4 invariant sector of the theory. The on-shell action and gravitational free energy are computed for the regular solutions, the latter being zero for the wormholes irrespective of supersymmetry. There are special loci in parameter space yielding solutions with enhanced (super)symmetry. Examples include a supersymmetric EAdS4 flow with SO(4)×SO(4) symmetry dual to a specific real mass deformation of ABJM on S3 as well as a nonsupersymmetric wormhole with SU(3)×U(1)2 symmetry. Uplift formulas for these and other examples to Euclidean solutions of 11-dimensional supergravity are presented and their complex nature discussed. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

The covariant Noether charge formalism (also known as the covariant phase method) of Wald and collaborators, including its cohomological extension, is a manifestly covariant Hamiltonian formalism that, in principle, allows one to define and compute the energy, angular momenta, and chemical potentials of generic solutions of gravitational theories. However, it has been observed that for some supergravity solutions the variation of the Noether charge is not (at least manifestably) integrable, and as a result it is unclear whether there are well-defined thermodynamic charges for these solutions. In this work, we derive an expression for the variation of the covariant Noether charges for any solution of type IIB 10-dimensional supergravity or 11-dimensional supergravity. Although this Noether quantity is not integrable in general, we show that for asymptotically scale-invariant solutions, it is. In particular, the asymptotic scale-invariance allows one to define an energy density and conjugate chemical potentials which obey a first law of thermodynamics and a Smarr relation. These two thermodynamic relations can then be shown to imply that the variation of the Noether charge is integrable, and accordingly the energy and other thermodynamic charges may be defined unambiguously. We explicitly demonstrate and illustrate our claim by computing the thermodynamic charges of two non-trivial supergravity solutions that were recently constructed: (1) the Polchinski–Strassler black brane that is dual to the deconfined phase of theory, and (2) the CGLP black brane that asymptotes to the mass deformed Cvetič–Gibbons–Lü–Pope (CGLP) solution.

A bstract Two fundamentally distinct types of quantities are both called “eikonal” in present amplitudes literature. The unitarity of the S-matrix ensures it can be written as the exponential of a Hermitian operator. The eikonal generator or Magnusian , which is the classical limit of the expectation value of that operator, generates all scattering observables. The leading order classical behavior of the phase of an S-matrix element is called the classical eikonal phase, and it coincides with a classical on-shell action. We demonstrate that the eikonal generator (Magnusian) and the eikonal phase (classical on-shell action) are inequivalent and find the exact general relationship between them. That relationship explains the special case of integrable scattering in which the two do coincide up to a Legendre transformation and explains why such a correspondence fails in general when spin or radiation are included.

It is shown that the complex phase of the Feynman propagator is a solution of the quantum Hamilton–Jacobi equation, namely, it is the quantum Hamilton's principal function (or quantum action). Therefore, the Feynman propagator can be computed either by means of the path integration, or by the way of the Hamilton–Jacobi equation. This is analogous to what happens in classical mechanics, where the Hamilton's principal function can be computed either by integrating the Lagrangian along the extremal paths, or as a solution of partial differential equation, namely the classical Hamilton–Jacobi equation. If the path is decomposed in the classical one and quantum fluctuations, the contribution of these quantum fluctuations satisfies a non-linear partial differential equation, whose coefficients depend on the classical action. When the contribution of the quantum fluctuations depend only on the time, it can be computed by means of a simple integration. The final results for the propagators in this case are equal to the Van Vleck–Pauli–Morette expressions, even though the two derivations are quite different. Quanta 2023; 12: 22–26.

Actions for noncommutative (NC) gauge field theories can be expanded perturbatively in powers of the noncommutativity parameter theta using the Seiberg–Witten map between ordinary classical fields and their NC counterparts. The leading order term represents classical (theta =0) action while higher-order terms give us theta -dependent NC corrections that ought to capture some aspects of quantum gravity. Building on previous work of Aschieri and Castellani on NC Chern–Simons (CS) gauge and gravity theories, showing that non-trivial theta -dependence exists only for spacetime dimensions Dge 5, we investigate a correlated effect of these extra spatial dimensions and noncommutativity on four-dimensional physics, up to first-order in theta . Assuming that one spatial dimension is compactified into a circle, we apply the Kaluza–Klein reduction procedure on the NC D=5 CS theory for the conformal gauge group SO(4, 2), to obtain an effective, theta -dependent four-dimensional theory of gravity that has Einstein–Hilbert gravity with negative cosmological constant as its commutative limit. We derive field equations for this modified theory of gravity and study the effect of NC interactions on some classical geometries, such as the AdS-Schwarzschild black hole. We find that this NC background spacetime gives rise to chiral gravitational anomaly due to the nonvanishing theta -dependent Pontryagin density.

In this Ph.D. thesis, accepted at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, we review and elaborate on a method to find the D‐brane effective action, based on BPS equations. Firstly, both for the Yang‐Mills action and the Born‐Infeld action it is shown that these configurations are indeed BPS, i.e. solutions to these equations saturate a Bogomolny bound and leave some supersymmetry unbroken. Next, we use the BPS equations as a tool to construct the D‐brane effective action and require that (a deformation of) these equations should still imply the equations of motion in more general cases. In the abelian case we managed to calculate all order in α′ four‐derivative corrections to the effective action and the BPS equations while in the non‐abelian case we obtained the effective action up to order α′4. Furthermore, we discuss a check based on the spectrum of strings stretching between intersecting branes. Finally, this Ph.D. thesis also discusses the construction of a boundary superspace which would be the first step to use the method of Weyl invariance in N = 2 superspace in order to again construct the D‐brane effective action. A more detailed summary of each section can be found in the introduction.

This article is devoted to the investigation of the interplay of supersymmetric Yang–Mills theories (SYM) and supergravity (SUGRA). The topic is studied from two points of view: Firstly from the point of view of AdS/CFT correspondence, which realises the coupling of four dimensional superconformal 𝒩 = 4 SYM theory and ten dimensional type IIB SUGRA in a holographic way. In order to arrive at theories that resemble quantum chromodynamics (QCD) more closely, fundamental fields are introduced using probe D7‐branes and non‐trivial background configuration are considered. In particular supergravity solutions that are only asymptotically anti‐de Sitter and break supersymmetry are used. This allows the description of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking. The meson spectrum is calculated and the existence of an associated Goldstone mode is demonstrated. Moreover it is shown that highly radially excited mesons are not degenerate. Additionally instanton configurations on the D7‐branes are investigated, which lead to a holographic description of the dual field theory's Higgs branch. Finally a holographic description of heavy‐light mesons is developed, which are mesons consisting of quarks with a large mass difference, such that a treatment of B mesons can be achieved The second approach is the technique of so‐called space‐time dependent couplings (also known as “local couplings”), where coupling constants are promoted to external sources. This allows to explore the conformal anomaly of quantum field theories coupled to a classical gravity background. The technique is extended to the superfield description of 𝒩 = 1 supergravity, a complete basis for the anomaly is given and the consistency conditions that arise from a cohomological treatment are calculated. Possible implications for an extension of Zamolodchikov's c‐theorem to four dimensional supersymmetric quantum field theories are discussed.

The complete Type IIB supergravity solutions with 16 supersymmetries are obtained on the manifold AdS4 ? S2 ? S2 ? ? with SO(2, 3) ? SO(3) ? SO(3) symmetry in terms of two holomorphic functions on a Riemann surface ?, which generally has a boundary. This is achieved by reducing the BPS equations using the above symmetry requirements, proving that all solutions of the BPS equations solve the full Type IIB supergravity field equations, mapping the BPS equations onto a new integrable system akin to the Liouville and Sine-Gordon theories, and mapping this integrable system to a linear equation which can be solved exactly. Amongst the infinite class of solutions, a non-singular Janus solution is identified which provides the AdS/CFT dual of the maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills interface theory discovered recently. The construction of general classes of globally non-singular solutions, including fully back-reacted AdS5 ? S5 and supersymmetric Janus doped with D5 and/or NS5 branes, is deferred to a companion paper [1].