arXiv subjects

Giuseppe D'Appollonio

Publications and source records attributed to Giuseppe D'Appollonio.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2015

A microscopic description of absorption in high-energy string-brane collisions

We study the collision of a highly energetic light closed string off a stack of Dp-branes at (sub)string-scale impact parameters and in a regime justifying a perturbative treatment. Unlike at larger impact parameters - where elastic scattering and/or tidal excitations dominate - here absorption of the closed string by the brane system, with the associated excitation of open strings living on it, becomes important. As a first step, we study this phenomenon at the disk level, in which the energetic closed string turns into a single heavy open string at rest whose particularly simple properties are described.

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arXiv2015

Regge behavior saves String Theory from causality violations

Higher-derivative corrections to the Einstein-Hilbert action are present in bosonic string theory leading to the potential causality violations recently pointed out by Camanho et al. We analyze in detail this question by considering high-energy string-brane collisions at impact parameters $b \le l_s$ (the string-length parameter) with $l_s \gg R_p$ (the characteristic scale of the D$p$-brane geometry). If we keep only the contribution of the massless states causality is violated for a set of initial states whose polarization is suitably chosen with respect to the impact parameter vector. Such violations are instead neatly avoided when the full structure of string theory - and in particular its Regge behavior - is taken into account.

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arXiv2013

Microscopic unitary description of tidal excitations in high-energy string-brane collisions

The eikonal operator was originally introduced to describe the effect of tidal excitations on higher-genus elastic string amplitudes at high energy. In this paper we provide a precise interpretation for this operator through the explicit tree-level calculation of generic inelastic transitions between closed strings as they scatter off a stack of parallel Dp-branes. We perform this analysis both in the light-cone gauge, using the Green-Schwarz vertex, and in the covariant formalism, using the Reggeon vertex operator. We also present a detailed discussion of the high energy behaviour of the covariant string amplitudes, showing how to take into account the energy factors that enhance the contribution of the longitudinally polarized massive states in a simple way.

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arXiv2013

The leading eikonal operator in string-brane scattering at high energy

In this paper we present two (a priori independent) derivations of the eikonal operator in string-brane scattering. The first one is obtained by summing surfaces with any number of boundaries, while in the second one the eikonal operator is derived from the three-string vertex in a suitable light-cone gauge. This second derivation shows that the bosonic oscillators present in the leading eikonal operator are to be identified with the string bosonic oscillators in a suitable light-cone gauge, while the first one shows that it exponentiates recovering unitarity. This paper is a review of results obtained in two previous publications of the same authors.

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arXiv2010

High-energy string-brane scattering: leading eikonal and beyond

We extend previous techniques for calculations of transplanckian-energy string-string collisions to the high-energy scattering of massless closed strings from a stack of N Dp-branes in Minkowski spacetime. We show that an effective non-trivial metric emerges from the string scattering amplitudes by comparing them against the semiclassical dynamics of high-energy strings in the extremal p-brane background. By changing the energy, impact parameter and effective open string coupling, we are able to explore various interesting regimes and to reproduce classical expectations, including tidal-force excitations, even beyond the leading-eikonal approximation.

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arXiv2010

Phase transitions between Reissner-Nordstrom and dilatonic black holes in 4D AdS spacetime

We study Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity models in four-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime which admit the Reissner-Nordstrom (RN) black hole solution. We show that below a critical temperature the AdS-RN solution becomes unstable against scalar perturbations and the gravitational system undergoes a phase transition. We show using numerical calculations that the new phase is a charged dilatonic black hole. Using the AdS/CFT correspondence we discuss the phase transition in the dual field theory both for non-vanishing temperatures and in the extremal limit. The extremal solution has a Lifshitz scaling symmetry. We discuss the optical conductivity in the new dual phase and find interesting behavior at low frequencies where it shows a "Drude peak". The resistivity varies with temperature in a non-monotonic way and displays a minimum at low temperatures which is reminiscent of the celebrated Kondo effect.

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arXiv2008

The diagonal cosets of the Heisenberg group

In this paper we study the diagonal cosets of the non-compact H4 WZW model. Generalising earlier work by Antoniadis and Obers, we provide an exact world-sheet description for several families of non-maximally symmetric gravitational plane waves with background NS fluxes. We show that the sigma-models that correspond to an asymmetric action of the gauge group smoothly interpolate between singular and non-singular plane waves. We also analyse the representations of the coset chiral algebra and derive the spectrum of all the models.

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arXiv2007

The abelian cosets of the Heisenberg group

In this paper we study the abelian cosets of the H(4) WZW model. They coincide or are related to several interesting three-dimensional backgrounds such as the Melvin model, the conical point-particle space-times and the null orbifold. We perform a detailed CFT analysis of all the models and compute the coset characters as well as some typical three-point couplings of coset primaries.

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arXiv2005

The symmetric branes of the H4 WZW model

We review the solution of the boundary CFTs that describe the symmetric branes in the Nappi-Witten gravitational wave, namely D2 and S1 branes. The D2 branes are the twisted branes of the model while the S1 branes are the Cardy branes. We present in both cases the bulk-boundary couplings and the boundary three-point couplings and discuss the relation with branes in AdS3 and in S3. We also discuss the analogy between the open string couplings in the H4 model and the couplings for magnetized and intersecting branes.

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arXiv2003

String interactions in gravitational wave backgrounds

The non-compact CFT of a class of NS-supported pp-wave backgrounds is solved exactly. The associated tree-level covariant string scattering amplitudes are calculated. The S-matrix elements are well-defined, dual but not analytic as a function of $p^+$. They have poles corresponding to physical intermediate states with $p^+\not =0$ and logarithmic branch cuts due to on-shell exchange of spectral-flow images of $p^+=0$ states. When $μ\to 0$ a smooth flat space limit is obtained. The $μ\to\infty$ limit, unlike the case of RR-supported pp-waves, gives again a flat space theory.

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arXiv2003

Gravitational waves from WZW models

A brief review is given of the recent solution of a non-compact CFT describing a NS-supported pp-wave background. We will first explain how to compute the three and four-point correlators using current algebra techniques, thereby showing that some generic features of the non-compact WZW models become very clear in this simple context. We will then present the Penrose limit as a contraction of an U(1)xSU(2)_k WZW model, an approach that could prove useful in order to understand holography for pp-wave space-times. We will finally comment on the string amplitudes and on the existence of two flat space limits.

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arXiv2002

Boundary States of c=1 and 3/2 Rational Conformal Field Theories

We study the boundary states for the rational points in the moduli spaces of c=1 conformal and c=3/2 superconformal field theories, including the isolated Ginsparg points. We use the orbifold and simple-current techniques to relate the boundary states of different theories and to obtain symmetry-breaking, non-Cardy boundary states. We show some interesting examples of fractional and twisted branes on orbifold spaces.

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arXiv2000

On the Trace Anomaly as a Measure of Degrees of Freedom

Recent conjectures of the c-theorem in four and higher dimensions have suggested that the coefficient of the Euler characteristic in the trace anomaly could measure the degrees of freedom in field theory and decrease along the renormalization-group flow. We compute this quantity for free massless scalar, fermion and antisymmetric tensor fields in any dimension, and analyse its dependence on spin and space-time dimension. In the limit of large number of dimensions, where the theories become semiclassical, we find that this quantity does not approach the classical number of field components, but is enhanced for spinful particles. This seemingly strange behaviour is found to be consistent with known renormalization-group patterns and a specific c-theorem conjecture.

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