Brane Splitting via Quantum Tunneling
Abstract
We study the two-centred AdS_7 x S^4 solution of eleven-dimensional supergravity using the Euclidean path-integral approach, and find that it can be interpreted as an instanton, signalling the splitting of the throat of the M5 brane. The instanton is interpreted as indicating a coherent superposition of the quantum states corresponding to classically distinct solutions. This is a surprising result since it leads, through the AdS/CFT correspondence, to contradictory implications for the dual (2,0) superconformal field theory on the M5 brane. We also argue that similar instantons should exist for other branes in ten- and eleven-dimensional supergravity. The counterterm subtraction technique for gravitational instantons, which arose from the AdS/CFT correspondence, is examined in terms of its applicability to our results. Connections are also made to the work of Maldacena et al on anti-de Sitter fragmentation.
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-th/0106008,
title = {Brane Splitting via Quantum Tunneling},
author = {Selena Ng and Malcolm Perry},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0106008},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
23 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX; v3: Minor clarifications and references added. Comments on self-dual field strengths added in Section 5.2, and on entropy in the final section. Version to appear in Nuclear Physics B