arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Donald Marolf.
Refined Algebraic Quantization and Group Averaging are powerful methods for quantizing constrained systems. They give constructive algorithms for generating observables and the physical inner product. This work outlines the current status of these ideas with an eye toward quantum gravity. The main goal is provide a description of outstanding problems and possible research topics in the field.
We calculate the effective action for small velocity scattering of localized 1-branes and 5-branes. Momentum is allowed to flow in the direction along the 1-branes so that the moduli space has only 1/8 of the full supersymmetry. Relative to the more familiar case with the 1-branes delocalized along the 5-branes, this introduces new moduli associated with the motion of the 1-branes along the 5-branes. We consider in detail the moduli space metric for the associated two body problem. Even for motion transverse to the 5-brane, our results differ substantially from the delocalized case. However, this difference only appears when both the 1-brane charge and the momentum charge are localized. Despite the fact that, in a certain sense, 1-branes spontaneously delocalize near a 5-brane horizon, the moduli space metric in this limit continues to differ from the delocalized result. This fact may be of use in developing a new description of the associated BPS bound states. The new terms depend on the torus size $L$ in such a way that they give a finite contribution in the $L \to \infty$ limit.
Two subtle aspects of brane intersections are investigated. The first concerns the `half-branes' that arise in discussions of the Hanany-Witten effect, often in the D0/D8 setting. The second involves the validity of seemingly singular classical BPS brane intersections. A study of holomorphic curves in the background of a Kaluza-Klein monopole and the associated reduction to type IIA supergravity sheds light on both issues. Many seemingly singular D2/D6 intersections are shown to lift to smooth configurations of M2-branes in 11-dimensions, and a mechanism is found for certain $Z_2$ confinement effects in type II string theories that eliminates any need for half-branes.
In theories with Chern-Simons terms or modified Bianchi identities, it is useful to define three notions of either electric or magnetic charge associated with a given gauge field. A language for discussing these charges is introduced and the properties of each charge are described. `Brane source charge' is gauge invariant and localized but not conserved or quantized, `Maxwell charge' is gauge invariant and conserved but not localized or quantized, while `Page charge' conserved, localized, and quantized but not gauge invariant. This provides a further perspective on the issue of charge quantization recently raised by Bachas, Douglas, and Schweigert.
We study a family of BPS solutions of type IIA supergravity that can be interpreted as describing the `transmutation' of a Neveu-Schwarz five-brane into a D4-brane in the presence of a D6-brane. The D4-brane, which terminates on the D6-brane, can be equally well interpreted as a `pure multipole' configuration of NS5-brane wrapped tightly around the D6-brane. Such a transmutation is a "near-core" version (i.e., near the D6-brane) of the brane-creation that can occur when two branes pass through each other, as in the Hanany-Witten construction. The work below highlights certain charge non-conservation features of type IIA supergravity.
Bousso has conjectured that in any spacetime satisfying Einstein's equation and satisfying the dominant energy condition, the "entropy flux" S through any null hypersurface L generated by geodesics with non-positive expansion starting from some spacelike 2 surface of area A must satisfy S<=A/4. This conjecture reformulates earlier conjectured entropy bounds of Bekenstein and also of Fischler and Susskind, and can be interpreted as a statement of the so-called holographic principle. We show that Bousso's entropy bound can be derived from either of two sets of hypotheses. The first set of hypotheses is (i) associated with each null surface L in spacetime there is an entropy flux 4-vector s^a_L whose integral over L is the entropy flux through L, and (ii) along each null geodesic generator of L, we have $|s^a_L k_a| \le π(λ_\infty - λ) T_{ab} k^a k^b$, where $T_{ab}$ is the stress-energy tensor, $λ$ is an affine parameter, $k^a = (d / dλ)^a$, and $λ_\infty$ is the value of affine parameter at the endpoint of the geodesic. The second (purely local) set of hypotheses is (i) there exists an absolute entropy flux 4-vector s^a such that the entropy flux through any null surface L is the integral of s^a over L, and (ii) this entropy flux 4-vector obeys the pointwise inequalities $(s_a k^a)^2 \le T_{ab} k^a k^b / (16 π)$ and $|k^a k^b \nabla_a s_b| \le πT_{ab} k^a k^b /4$ for any null vector k^a. Under the first set of hypotheses, we also show that a stronger entropy bound can be derived, which directly implies the generalized second law of thermodynamics.
One of the most challenging technical aspects of the dualities between string theory on anti-de Sitter spaces and conformal field theories is understanding how location in the interior of spacetime is represented in the field theory. It has recently been argued that the interior of the spacetime can be directly probed by using intrinsically non-local quantities in the field theory. In addition, Balasubramanian and Ross [hep-th/9906226] argued that when the spacetime described the formation of an AdS_3 black hole, the propagator in the field theory probed the whole spacetime, including the region behind the horizon. We use the same approach to study the propagator for the BTZ black hole and a black hole solution with a single exterior region, and show that it reproduces the propagator associated with the natural vacuum states on these spacetimes. We compare our result with a toy model of the CFT for the single-exterior black hole, finding remarkable agreement. The spacetimes studied in this work are analytic, which makes them quite special. We also discuss the interpretation of this propagator in more general spacetimes, shedding light on certain issues involving causality, black hole horizons, and products of local operators on the boundary.
These notes present an introduction to branes in ten and eleven dimensional supergravity and string/M-theory which is geared to an audience of traditional relativists, especially graduate students and others with little background in supergravity. They are designed as a tutorial and not as a thorough review of the subject; as a result, many topics of current interest are not addressed. However, a guide to further reading is included. The presentation begins with eleven dimensional supergravity, stressing its relation to 3+1 Einstein-Maxwell theory. The notion of Kaluza-Klein compactification is then introduced, and is used to relate the eleven dimensional discussion to supergravity in 9+1 dimensions and to string theory. The focus is on type IIA supergravity, but the type IIB theory is also addressed, as is the T-duality symmetry that relates them. Branes in both 10+1 and 9+1 dimensions are included. Finally, although the details are not discussed, a few comments are provided on the relation between supergravity and string perturbation theory and on black hole entropy. The goal is to provide traditional relativists with a kernel of knowledge from which to grow their understanding of branes and strings.
We study fully localized BPS brane solutions in classical supergravity using a perturbative approach to the coupled Born-Infeld/bulk supergravity system. We derive first order bulk supergravity fields for world-volume solitons corresponding to intersecting M2-branes and to a fundamental string ending on a D3-brane. One interesting feature is the appearance of certain off-diagonal metric components and corresponding components of the gauge potentials. Making use of a supersymmetric ansatz for the exact fields, we formulate a perturbative expansion which applies to $M2 \perp M2 (0), M5 \perp M5 (3)$ and $Dp \perp Dp (p-2)$ intersections. We find that perturbation theory qualitatively distinguishes between certain of these cases: perturbation theory breaks down at second order for intersecting M2-branes and D$p$-branes with $p\le 3$ while it is well behaved, at least to this order, for the remaining cases. This indicates that the behavior of the full non-linear intersecting Dp-brane solutions may be qualitatively different for $p \le 3$ than for $p \ge 4$, and that fully localized asymptotically flat solutions for $p \le 3$ may not exist. We discuss the consistency of these results with world-volume field theory properties.
This contribution to the proceedings of the 1999 Canadian Conference on General Relativity and Relativistic Astrophysics is a brief exposition of earlier work, with Sumati Surya (hep-th/9805121) Amanda Peet (hep-th/9903213), addressing certain results in higher dimensional supergravity that are related to black hole no-hair theorems. Its purpose is to describe, in language appropriate for an audience of relativists, how these results can be related to the Maldacena conjecture (aka, the AdS/CFT correspondence). The end product may be taken as a new kind of quantitative evidence in support of the Maldacena conjecture.
The search for intersecting brane solutions in supergravity is a large and profitable industry. Recently, attention has focused on finding localized forms of known `delocalized' solutions. However, in some cases, a localized version of the delocalized solution simply does not exist. Instead, localized separated branes necessarily delocalize as the separation is removed. This phenomenon is related to black hole no-hair theorems, i.e. `baldness.' We continue the discussion of this effect and describe how it can be understood, in the case of Dirichlet branes, in terms of the corresponding intersection field theory. When it occurs, it is associated with the quantum mixing of phases and lack of superselection sectors in low dimensional field theories. We find surprisingly wide agreement between the field theory and supergravity both with respect to which examples delocalize and with respect to the rate at which this occurs.
This work addresses certain ambiguities in the Dirac approach to constrained systems. Specifically, we investigate the space of so-called ``rigging maps'' associated with Refined Algebraic Quantization, a particular realization of the Dirac scheme. Our main result is to provide a condition under which the rigging map is unique, in which case we also show that it is given by group averaging techniques. Our results comprise all cases where the gauge group is a finite-dimensional Lie group.
The Dirac quantization `procedure' for constrained systems is well known to have many subtleties and ambiguities. Within this ill-defined framework, we explore the generality of a particular interpretation of the Dirac procedure known as refined algebraic quantization. We find technical conditions under which refined algebraic quantization can reproduce the general implementation of the Dirac scheme for systems whose constraints form a Lie algebra with structure constants. The main result is that, under appropriate conditions, the choice of an inner product on the physical states is equivalent to the choice of a ``rigging map'' in refined algebraic quantization.
The technique known as group averaging provides powerful machinery for the study of constrained systems. However, it is likely to be well defined only in a limited set of cases. Here, we investigate the possibility of using a `renormalized' group averaging in certain models. The results of our study may indicate a general connection between superselection sectors and the rate of divergence of the group averaging integral.
In the context of the conjectured AdS-CFT correspondence of string theory, we consider a class of asymptotically Anti-de Sitter black holes whose conformal boundary consists of a single connected component, identical to the conformal boundary of Anti-de Sitter space. In a simplified model of the boundary theory, we find that the boundary state to which the black hole corresponds is pure, but this state involves correlations that produce thermal expectation values at the usual Hawking temperature for suitably restricted classes of operators. The energy of the state is finite and agrees in the semiclassical limit with the black hole mass. We discuss the relationship between the black hole topology and the correlations in the boundary state, and speculate on generalizations of the results beyond the simplified model theory.
This paper explores in some detail a recent proposal (the Rieffel induction/refined algebraic quantization scheme) for the quantization of constrained gauge systems. Below, the focus is on systems with a single constraint and, in this context, on the uniqueness of the construction. While in general the results depend heavily on the choices made for certain auxiliary structures, an additional physical argument leads to a unique result for typical cases. We also discuss the `superselection laws' that result from this scheme and how their existence also depends on the choice of auxiliary structures. Again, when these structures are chosen in a physically motivated way, the resulting superselection laws are physically reasonable.
We discuss quotients of Anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime by a discrete group in light of the AdS-CFT correspondence. Some quotients describe closed universes which expand from zero volume to a maximum size and then contract. Maldacena's conjecture suggests that they should be represented in string theory by suitable quotients of the boundary conformal field theory. We discuss the required identifications, and construct the states associated with the linearized supergravity modes in the cosmological background.
We address the delocalization of low dimensional D-branes and NS-branes when they are a part of a higher dimensional BPS black brane, and the homogeneity of the resulting horizon. We show that the effective delocalization of such branes is a classical effect that occurs when localized branes are brought together. Thus, the fact that the few known solutions with inhomogeneous horizons are highly singular need not indicate a singularity of generic D- and NS-brane states. Rather, these singular solutions are likely to be unphysical as they cannot be constructed from localized branes which are brought together from a finite separation.