Colliding branes without $Z_{2}$ symmetry and the formation of spacetime singularities in string theory are studied. After developing the general formulas to describe such events, we study a particular class of exact solutions first in the 5-dimensional effective theory, and then lift it to the 10-dimensional spacetime. In general, the 5-dimensional spacetime is singular, due to the mutual focus of the two colliding 3-branes. Non-singular cases also exist, but with the price that both of the colliding branes violate all the three energy conditions, weak, dominant, and strong. After lifted to 10 dimensions, we find that the spacetime remains singular, whenever it is singular in the 5-dimensional effective theory. In the cases where no singularities are formed after the collision, we find that the two 8-branes necessarily violate all the energy conditions.
We comment on the global structure of the spacetime that results from the collision of two bubbles filled with AdS space produced from the decay of a false vacuum through quantum tunnelling.
In the context of colliding brane worlds I discuss a toy cosmological model, developed in collaboration with E. Gravanis, which arguably produces inflation and a relaxing to zero cosmological ``constant'' hierarchically small as compared to the supersymmetry breaking (TeV) scale. Supersymmetry breaking is induced by compactification of the brane worlds on magnetized tori. The crucial ingredient is the non-criticality (non conformality) of string theory on the observable brane world induced at the collision, which is thus viewed as a cause for departure from equilibrium in this system. The hier…
We study the dynamics of colliding domain walls including self-gravity. The initial data is set up by applying a BPS domain wall in five-dimensional supergravity, and we evolve the system determining the final outcome of collisions. After a collision, a spacelike curvature singularity covered by a horizon is formed in the bulk, resulting in a black brane with trapped domain walls. This is a generic consequence of collisions, except for non-relativistic weak field cases, in which the walls pass through one another or multiple bounces take place without singularity formation. These results show …
We examine the global structure of colliding domain walls in AdS spacetime and come to the conclusion that singularities forming from such collisions are of the big-crunch type rather than that of a black brane.
We study the behaviour of five-dimensional fermions localized on branes, which we describe by domain walls, when two parallel branes collide in a five-dimensional Minkowski background spacetime. We find that most fermions are localized on both branes as a whole even after collision. However, how much fermions are localized on which brane depends sensitively on the incident velocity and the coupling constants unless the fermions exist on both branes.
We discuss the dynamics of intersecting $p$-branes with cosmological constants in the higher-dimensional gravity theories. For the delocalized brane case, these solutions describe an asymptotically de Sitter or power-law expanding universe, while for the partially localized intersecting branes, they describe homogeneous and isotropic universes at each position of the overall transverse space. We then apply these time-dependent branes to the study on the collision of two 0-branes and show that the 0$-$8-brane system or the smeared $0-p_I$-brane system can provide an example of colliding branes …
We construct a class of analytic solutions with two free parameters to the five-dimensional Einstein field equations, which represents the collision of two timelike 3-branes. We study the local and global properties of the spacetime, and find that spacelike singularities generically develop after the collision, due to the mutual focus of the two branes. Non-singular spacetime can be constructed only in the case where both of the two branes violate the energy conditions.
We present a time-dependent solution of the Nambu-Goto action which represents two colliding waves moving at the speed of light. This solution can be decomposed into two distinct regions with different geometries corresponding to shrinking or expanding brane universe and two colliding branes. The former describes the Big Bounce without singularity while the latter describes that two branes collide and reconnect to each other. The colliding brane region has a signature change. Classical dynamics of a massive particle on the brane is studied through the geodesics.
We derive conservation laws for collisions of self-gravitating $n$-branes (or $n$-dimensional shells) in an $(n+2)$ dimensional spacetime including induced gravity on the brane. Previous work has shown how geometrical identities in general relativity enforce conservation of energy-momentum at collisions. The inclusion of induced gravity terms introduces a gravitational self-energy on the brane which permits energy-momentum conservation of matter fields on the brane to be broken, so long as the total energy-momentum, including induced gravity terms, is conserved. We give simple examples with tw…
We compute the cosmological perturbations generated in the colliding bubble braneworld universe in which bubbles filled with five-dimensional anti-de Sitter space (AdS5)expanding within a five dimensional de Sitter space (dS5) or Minkowski space (M5) collide to form a (3+1) dimensional local brane on which the cosmology is virtually identical to that of the Randall-Sundrum model. The perturbation calculation presented here is valid to linear order but treats the fluctuations of the expanding bubbles as (3+1) dimensional fields localized on the bubble wall. We find that for bubbles expanding in…
In a braneworld description of our universe, we must allow for the possibility of having dynamical branes around the time of the big bang. Some properties of such domain walls in motion are discussed here, for example the ability of negative-tension domain walls to bounce off spacetime singularities and the consequences for cosmological perturbations. In this context, we will also review a colliding branes solution of heterotic M-theory that has been proposed as a model for early universe cosmology.
This is a short introduction to the study of compactifications of F-theory on elliptic Calabi-Yau threefolds near colliding singularities. In particular we consider the case of non-transversal intersections of the singular fibers.
We investigate colliding processes of closed strings with large angular momenta with D-branes. We give explicit CFT calculations for closed string states with an arbitrary number of bosonic excitations and no or one fermion excitation. The results reproduce the correspondence between closed string states and single trace operators in the boundary gauge theory recently suggested by Berenstein, Maldacena and Nastase.
We study F-theory on elliptic threefold Calabi-Yau near colliding singularities. We demonstrate that resolutions of those singularities generically correspond to transitions to phases characterized by new tensor multiplets and enhanced gauge symmetry. These are governed by the dynamics of tensionless strings. We also find new transition points which are associated with several small instantons simultaneously shrinking to zero size.
Much work has been devoted to the phenomenology and cosmology of the so-called braneworld universe, where our (3+1)-dimensional universe lies on a brane surrounded by a (4+1)-dimensional bulk spacetime that is essentially empty except for a negative cosmological constant and the various modes associated with gravity. For such a braneworld cosmology, the difficulty of justifying some preferred initial conditions inevitably arises. The various proposals for inflation restricted to the brane only partially explain the homogeneity and isotropy of the resulting braneworld universe because the homog…
We propose a cosmological scenario in which the hot big bang universe is produced by the collision of a brane in the bulk space with a bounding orbifold plane, beginning from an otherwise cold, vacuous, static universe. The model addresses the cosmological horizon, flatness and monopole problems and generates a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of density perturbations without invoking superluminal expansion (inflation). The scenario relies, instead, on physical phenomena that arise naturally in theories based on extra dimensions and branes. As an example, we present our scenario predominantly w…
We study the collision of two flat, parallel end-of-the-world branes in heterotic M-theory. By insisting that there is no divergence in the Riemann curvature as the collision approaches, we are able to single out a unique solution possessing the local geometry of (2d compactified Milne)/Z_2 x R_3, times a finite-volume Calabi-Yau manifold in the vicinity of the collision. At a finite time before and after the collision, a second type of singularity appears momentarily on the negative-tension brane, representing its bouncing off a zero of the bulk warp factor. We find this singularity to be rem…
A static self-tuning SO(3)xZ_2 symmetric and translation invariant braneworld setup with flat brane is considered. We discuss the null energy conditions (NEC) for matter on the brane and in the bulk and prove that for the static regular background with broken Lorentz invariance the NEC and positiveness of the total energy density on the brane and NEC in the bulk cannot be satisfied simultaneously. Then we give some examples and elaborate some special cases. For instance, we provide a macroscopic solution for a background with Lifshitz scaling.
When gravity couples to scalar fields in Anti-de Sitter space, the geometry becomes non-AdS and develops singularities generally. We propose a criterion that the singularity is physically admissible if the integral of the on-shell Lagrangian density over the finite range is finite everywhere. For all classes of the singularities studied here, the criterion suggested in this paper coincides with an independent proposal made by Gubser that the potential should be bounded from above in the solution. This gives a reason why Gubser's conjecture works.
We argue that in the TeV-gravity scenario high energy hadrons colliding on the 3-brane embedded in D=4+n-dimensional spacetime, with n dimensions smaller than the hadron size, can be considered as cosmic membranes. In the 5-dimensional case these cosmic membranes produce effects similar to cosmic strings in the 4-dimensional world. We calculate the corrections to the eikonal approximation for the gravitational scattering of partons due to the presence of effective hadron cosmic membranes. Cosmic membranes dominate the momentum lost in the longitudinal direction for colliding particles that ope…
It is intriguing to consider the possibility that the Big Bang of the standard (3+1) dimensional cosmology originated from the collision of two branes within a higher dimensional spacetime, leading to the production of a large amount of entropy. In this paper we study, subject to certain well-defined assumptions, under what conditions such a collision leads to an expanding universe. We assume the absence of novel physics, so that ordinary (4+1) -dimensional Einstein gravity remains a valid approximation. It is necessary that the fifth dimension not become degenerate at the moment of collision.…
Higher-dimensional braneworld models which contain both bulk and brane curvature terms in the action admit cosmological singularities of rather unusual form and nature. These `quiescent' singularities, which can occur both during the contracting as well as the expanding phase, are characterised by the fact that while the matter density and Hubble parameter remain finite, all higher derivatives of the scale factor ($\stackrel{..}{a}$, $\stackrel{...}{a}$ etc.) diverge as the cosmological singularity is approached. The singularities are the result of the embedding of the (3+1)-dimensional brane …
The singularity structure and the corresponding asymptotic behavior of a 3-brane coupled to a scalar field in a five dimensional bulk is analyzed in full generality, using the method of asymptotic splittings. It is shown that the collapse singularity at a finite distance from the brane can be avoided only at the expense of making the brane world-volume positively or negatively curved.
We consider branes embedded in spacetimes of codimension one and two, with a warped metric tensor for the subspace parallel to the brane. We study a variety of brane-world solutions arising by introducing a Schwarzschild-like black hole metric on the brane and we investigate the properties of the corresponding higher-dimensional spacetime. We demonstrate that normalizable bulk modes lead to a vanishing flow of energy through the naked singularities. From this point of view, these singularities are harmless.
The existence of envelopes is studied for systems of differential equations in connection with the method of asymptotic splittings which allows to determine the singularity structure of the solutions. The result is applied to braneworlds consisting of a 3-brane in a five-dimensional bulk, in the presence of an analog of a bulk perfect fluid parametrizing a generic class of bulk matter. We find that all flat brane solutions suffer from a finite distance singularity contrary to previous claims. We then study the possibility of avoiding finite distance singularities by cutting the bulk and gluing…
We study a general configuration of parallel branes having co-dimension >2 situated inside a compact d-dimensional bulk space within the framework of a scalar and flux field coupled to gravity in D dimensions, such as arises in the bosonic part of some D-dimensional supergravities. A general relation is derived which relates the induced curvature of the observable noncompact n dimensions to the asymptotic behaviour of the bulk fields near the brane positions. For compactifications down to n = D-d dimensions we explicitly solve the bulk field equations to obtain the near-brane asymptotics, and …
We consider semi-direct gauge mediation models of supersymmetry breaking where the messengers are composite fields and their supersymmetric mass is naturally generated through quartic superpotential couplings. We show that such composite messenger models can be easily embedded in quiver gauge theories arising from D-branes at Calabi-Yau singularities, and argue that semi-direct gauge mediation is in fact a very natural option for supersymmetry breaking in D-brane models. We provide several explicit examples and discuss their salient phenomenological properties.
We study the dynamics of brane worlds coupled to a scalar field and gravity, and find that self-tuning of the cosmological constant is generic in theories with at most two branes or a single brane with orbifold boundary conditions. We demonstrate that singularities are generic in the self-tuned solutions compatible with localized gravity on the brane: we show that localized gravity with an infinitely large extra dimension is only consistent with particular fine-tuned values of the brane tension. The number of allowed brane tension values is related to the number of negative stationary points o…
Anti-D-branes inserted in warped throat geometries (supported by fluxes that carry D-brane charges) develop unphysical singularities. It has been argued that these singularities could be resolved when one goes beyond the linearized approximation or includes the effects of brane polarization. In this paper we consider anti-D6 branes, whose singularities have been shown to exist at the full non-linear level, and demonstrate that there is no D8 brane polarization that can resolve the singularity. We comment on the potential implications of this result for the resolution of anti-D3 brane singulari…
In this paper, we analyze the deflection angle of light by Brane-Dicke wormhole in the weak field limit approximation to find the effect of the Brane-Dicke coupling parameter on the weak gravitation lensing. For this purpose, we consider new geometric techniques, i.e., Gauss-Bonnet theorem and optical geometry in order to calculate the deflection angle. Furthermore, we verify our results by considering the most familiar geodesic technique. Moreover, we establish the quantum corrected metric of Brane-Dicke wormhole by replacing the classical geodesic with Bohmian trajectories, whose matter sour…
The motion of a test Dq-brane in a Dp-brane background is studied. The induced metric on the test brane is then interpreted as the cosmology of the test brane universe. One is then able to resolve the resulting cosmological singularities. In particular, for a D3-brane in a D5-brane background, one finds a 3+1 dimensional FRW universe with equation of state $p = \ed$. It has been argued that this may have been the dominant form of matter at very early times.
By utilizing non-standard slicings of 5-dimensional Schwarzschild and Schwarzschild-AdS manifolds based on isotropic coordinates, we generate static and spherically symmetric braneworld spacetimes containing shell-like naked null singularities. For planar slicings, we find that the brane-matter sourcing the solution is a perfect fluid with an exotic equation of state and a pressure singularity where the brane crosses the bulk horizon. From a relativistic point of view, such a singularity is required to maintain matter infinitesimally above the surface of a black hole. From the point of view of…
Brane-world singularities are analysed, emphasizing the case of supergravity in singular spaces where the singularity puzzle is naturally resolved. These naked singularities are either time-like or null, corresponding to the finite or infinite amount of conformal time that massless particles take in order to reach them. Quantum mechanically we show that the brane-world naked singularities are inconsistent. Indeed we find that time-like singularities are not wave-regular, so the time-evolution of wave packets is not uniquely defined in their vicinity, while null singularities absorb incoming ra…
Recent studies of homogeneous anisotropic universe models in the brane world scenario show that the cosmological singularity in this context is isotropic. It has therefore been suggested that this may be a generic feature of singularities on the brane, even in the inhomogeneous case. Using a perturbative approach, we show that this is not the case. As in the GR case, the presence of decaying modes in the perturbations signal the instability (in the past) of the isotropic singularity. The brane universe is therefore not born with isotropy built in: as in standard cosmology, the observed large-s…
By extending previous analysis of the authors, a systematic study of the singularity structure and possible asymptotic behaviors of five-dimensional braneworld solutions is performed in the case where the bulk is a mixture of an analog of perfect fluid (with a density and pressure depending on the extra coordinate) and a massless scalar field. The two bulk components interact by exchanging energy so that the total energy is conserved. In a particular range of the interaction parameters, we find flat brane general solutions avoiding the singularity at finite distance from the brane, in the same…
We consider D3 branes at orbifolded conifold singularities which are not quotient singularities. We use toric geometry and gauged linear sigma model to study the moduli space of the gauge theories on the D3 branes. We find that topologically distinct phases are related by a flop transition. It is also shown that an orbifold singularity can occur in some phases if we give expectation values to some of the chiral fields.
The study of brane-antibrane configurations in string theory leads to the understanding of supersymmetric D$p$-branes as the bound states of higher dimensional branes. Configurations of pairs brane-antibrane do admit in a natural way their description in terms of K-theory. We analyze configurations of brane-antibrane at fixed point orbifold singularities in terms of equivariant K-theory as recently suggested by Witten. Type I and IIB fivebranes and small instantons on ALE singularities are described in K-theoretic terms and their relation to Kronheimer-Nakajima construction of instantons is al…
The semiclassical grey-body factor for massless fermion emission from the four dimensional black hole described by an ensemble of intersecting triplets of D- five-branes is shown to be consistent with the (statistical) decay rate of the branes (in the `long' D-string approximation) into massless fermionic closed string states, subject to assumptions regarding the energy distribution of colliding open string states.
In the framework of type IIB string compactifications on Calabi-Yau orientifolds we describe how to construct consistent global embeddings of models with fractional D3-branes and connected `flavour' D7-branes at del Pezzo singularities with moduli stabilisation. Our results are applied to build an explicit compact example with a left-right symmetric model at a dP_0 singularity which features three families of chiral matter and gauge coupling unification at the intermediate scale. We show how to stabilise the moduli obtaining a controlled de Sitter minimum and spontaneous supersymmetry breaking…
We discuss consistency conditions for branes at orbifold singularities. The conditions have a world-sheet interpretation in terms of tadpole cancellation and a space-time interpretation in terms of anomalies. As examples, we consider type II and type I branes on $C^2/Z_M$ orbifolds. We give orientifold constructions of phases of type I or heterotic string theory, involving branches with extra tensor multiplets, which arise when small SO(32) instantons sit on orbifold singularities.
We consider, in 5 dimensions, the low energy effective action induced by heterotic string theory including the leading stringy correction of order alpha'. In the presence of a single positive tension flat brane, and an infinite extra dimension, we present a particular class of solutions with finite 4-dimensional Planck scale and no naked singularity. A ``self-tuning'' mechanism for relaxing the cosmological constant on the brane, without a drastic fine tuning of parameters, is discussed in this context. Our solutions are distinct from the standard self-tuning solutions discussed in the context…
We discuss examples of D-branes probing toric singularities, and the computation of their world-volume gauge theories from the geometric data of the singularities. We consider several such examples of D-branes on partial resolutions of the orbifolds ${\bf C^3/Z_2\times Z_2}$,${\bf C^3/Z_2\times Z_3}$ and ${\bf C^4/Z_2\times Z_2 \times Z_2}$.
Using the method of asymptotic splittings, the possible singularity structures and the corresponding asymptotic behavior of a 3-brane in a five-dimensional bulk are classified, in the case where the bulk field content is parametrized by an analog of perfect fluid with an arbitrary equation of state $P=γρ$ between the `pressure' $P$ and the `density' $ρ$. In this analogy with homogeneous cosmologies, the time is replaced by the extra coordinate transverse to the 3-brane, whose world-volume can have an arbitrary constant curvature. The results depend crucially on the constant parameter $γ$: (i) …
We make some comments on the derivation of N=2 super-conformal field theories with smooth gauge group from M2-branes placed at conifold singularities, giving a detailed prescription for two specific examples: the singular cones over the Q^{111} and M^{110} manifolds.
We discuss type II and type I branes at general ADE type orbifold singularities. We show that there are new phases of type I or heterotic string theory in six dimensions, involving extra tensor multiplets, which arise when small instantons sit on orbifold singularities. The theories with extra tensor multiplets are explicitly constructed via orientifolds. The world-volume theories in type IIB or type I five-branes at orbifold singularities lead to the existence of several infinite classes of six dimensional, interacting, renormalization group fixed point theories.
We present several classes of new 6d string theories which arise via branes at orbifold singularities. They have compact moduli spaces, associated with tensor multiplets, given by Weyl alcoves of non-Abelian groups. We discuss T-duality and Matrix model applications upon compactification.
We study a general dilatonic p-brane solution in arbitrary dimensions in relation to the Randall-Sundrum scenario. When the p-brane is fully localized along its transverse directions, the Kaluza-Klein zero mode of bulk graviton is not normalizable. When the p-brane is delocalized along its transverse directions except one, the Kaluza-Klein zero mode of bulk graviton is normalizable if the warp factor is chosen to increase, in which case there are singularities at finite distance away from the p-brane. Such delocalized p-brane can be regarded as a dilatonic domain wall as seen in higher dimensi…
In these notes we give an introduction to some of the concepts involved in constructing SM-like gauge theories in systems of branes at singularities of CY manifolds. These notes are an expanded version of lectures given by Herman Verlinde at the Cargese 2006 Summer School.
We consider Type 0B D3-branes placed at conical singularities and analyze in detail the conifold singularity. We study the non supersymmetric gauge theories on their worldvolume and their conjectured dual gravity descriptions. In the ultraviolet the solutions exhibit a logarithmic running of the gauge coupling. In the infrared we find confining solutions and IR fixed points.
In this note we discuss a possible resolution of the flux singularities associated with the insertion of branes in backgrounds supported by fluxes that carry charges opposite to the branes. We present qualitative arguments that such a setup could be unstable both in the closed and open string sector. The singularities in the fluxes then get naturally resolved by taking the true solution to be a time-dependent process in which flux gets attracted towards the brane and subsequently annihilates.
In this paper we consider a somewhat unconventional approach for deriving worldvolume theories for D3 branes probing Calabi-Yau singularities. The strategy consists of extrapolating the calculation of F-terms to the large volume limit. This method circumvents the inherent limitations of more traditional approaches used for orbifold and toric singularities. We illustrate its usefulness by deriving quiver theories for D3 branes probing singularities where a Del Pezzo surface containing four, five or six exceptional curves collapses to zero size. In the latter two cases the superpotential depends…
We study the regularization of the codimension-2 singularities in six-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell axisymmetric models with warping. These singularities are replaced by codimension-1 branes of a ring form, situated around the axis of symmetry. We assume that there is a brane scalar field with Goldstone dynamics, which is known to generate a brane energy momentum tensor of a particular structure necessary for the above regularization to be successful. We study these compactifications in both a non-supersymmetric and a supersymmetric setting. We see that in the non-supersymmetric case, there is …
We consider the couplings induced on the world-volume field theory of D3-branes at local toric Calabi-Yau singularities by euclidean D3-brane (E3-brane) instantons wrapped on (non-compact) holomorphic 4-cycles. These instantons produce insertions of BPS baryonic or mesonic operators of the four-dimensional ${\cal{N}}=1$ quiver gauge theory. We argue that these systems underlie, via the near-horizon limit, the familiar AdS/CFT map between BPS operators and D3-branes wrapped on supersymmetric 3-cycles on the 5d horizon. The relation implies that there must exist E3-brane instantons with appropri…
We analyze further the possibility of obtaining localized black hole solutions in the framework of Randall-Sundrum-type brane-world models. We consider black hole line-elements analytic at the horizon, namely, generalizations of the Painleve and Vaidya metrics, which are taken to have a decaying dependence of the horizon on the extra dimension. These backgrounds have no other singularities apart from the standard black hole singularity which is localized in the direction of the fifth dimension. Both line-elements can be sustained by a regular, shell-like distribution of bulk matter of a non-st…
We study local mirror symmetry on non-compact Calabi-Yau manifolds (conifold type of singularities) in the presence of D3 brane probes. Using an intermediate brane setup of NS 5-branes `probed' by D4 resp. D5 branes, we can explicitly T-dualize three isometry directions to relate a non-compact Calabi-Yau manifold to its local mirror. The intermediate brane setup is the one that is best suited to read off the gauge theory on the probe. Both intervals and boxes of NS 5-branes appear as brane setups. Going from one to the other is equivalent to performing a conifold transition in the dual geometr…
We present novel continuous supersymmetric transitions which take place among different chiral configurations of D3/D7 branes at singularities in the context of type IIB Calabi-Yau compactifications. We find that distinct local models which admit a consistent global embedding can actually be connected to each other along flat directions by means of transitions of bulk-to-flavour branes. This has interesting interpretations in terms of brane recombination/splitting and brane/anti-brane creation/annihilation. These transitions give rise to a large web of quiver gauge theories parametrised by spl…
Non-perturbative D-brane instanton effects in 4d N = 1 string compactifications can be geometrized in terms of a backreacted generalized geometry. We extend earlier results to setups in which the D-brane instanton is charged under the 4d gauge symmetries, and show that the backreacted topology yields the correct charged field theory operators in the 4d effective action. In type IIA models with D6-branes, the backreaction of D2-brane instantons forces the recombination of D6-branes, such that the 4d charged field theory operators arise from basic worldsheet instantons in the backreacted geometr…
Unphysical 3-form flux singularities near anti-branes have been argued to get resolved in the classical supergravity regime when brane polarisation is properly taken into account. The only example that does not seem to fit this logic is the $\bar{\text{D6}}$-brane because of a no-go theorem for well behaved supergravity solutions with negative D6 charge. In this paper we first review the existing results demonstrating how brane polarisation resolves singularities for $\bar{\text{D3}}$-branes and then we improve on the description of the polarisation of $\bar{\text{D6}}$-branes into KK5 dipoles…
