Dieter Van den Bleeken

Dirac actions for D-branes on backgrounds with fluxes

The understanding of the fermionic sector of the world-volume D-brane dynamics on a general background with fluxes is crucial in several branches of string theory like, for example, the study of nonperturbative effects or the construction of realistic models living on D-branes. In this paper, we derive a new simple Dirac-like form for the bilinear fermionic action for any Dp-brane in any supergravity background, which generalizes the usual Dirac action valid in the absence of fluxes. A non-zero world-volume field strength deforms the usual Dirac operator in the action to a generalized non-canonical one. We show how the canonical form can be re-established by a redefinition of the world-volume geometry.

Quantizing N = 2 multicenter solutions

N = 2 supergravity in four dimensions, or equivalently N = 1 supergravity in five dimensions, has an interesting set of BPS solutions that each correspond to a number of charged centers. This set contains black holes, black rings and their bound states, as well as many smooth solutions. Moduli spaces of such solutions carry a natural symplectic form which we determine, and which allows us to study their quantization. By counting the resulting wavefunctions we come to an independent derivation of some of the wall-crossing formulae. Knowledge of the explicit form of these wavefunctions allows us to find quantum resolutions to some apparent classical paradoxes such as solutions with barely bound centers and those with an infinitely deep throat. We show that quantum effects seem to cap off the throat at a finite depth and we give an estimate for the corresponding mass gap in the dual CFT. This is an interesting example of a system where quantum effects cannot be neglected at macroscopic scales even though the curvature is everywhere small.

Scaling BPS solutions and pure-Higgs states

A bstractDepending on the value of the coupling, BPS states of type II string theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau manifold can be described as multicenter supergravity solutions or as BPS states in a quiver gauge theory. While states that spread into the Coulomb-branch states can be mapped one-to-one to supergravity states, this is not automatically so for the majority of Higgs-branch states. In this paper we explicitly compute the BPS spectrum of the Higgs branch of a three-center quiver with a closed loop, and identify the subset of states that are in one-to-one correspondence with Coulomb/supergravity multicenter states. We also show that there exist additional “pure-Higgs” states, that exist if and only if the charges of the centers can form a scaling solution. Using generating function techniques we compute the large charge degeneracy of the “pure-Higgs” sector and show that it is always exponential. We also construct the map between Higgs- and Coulomb-branch states, discuss its relation to the Higgs-Coulomb map of one of the authors and Verlinde, and argue that the pure Higgs states live in the kernel of this map. Given that these states have no obvious description on the Coulomb branch or in supergravity, we discuss whether they can correspond to a single-center black hole or can be related to more complicated horizonless configurations.

A bound on the entropy of supergravity

We determine, in two independent ways, the number of BPS quantum states arising from supergravity degrees of freedom in a system with fixed total D4D0 charge. First, we count states generated by quantizing the spacetime degrees of freedom of “entropyless” multicentered solutions consisting of

Pseudo-supersymmetry and a tale of alternate realities

\overline {\text{D0}}

Brane bending and monopole moduli

-branes bound to a D6

Newton–Cartan, Galileo–Maxwell and Kaluza–Klein

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