Brane dynamics from the Born-Infeld action
Abstract
We use the abelian Born-Infeld action for the world-volume gauge field and transverse displacement scalars to explore new aspects of D-brane structure and dynamics. We study several classic gauge field configurations, including point charges in any world-volume dimension and vortices in two world-volume dimensions, and show that, with an appropriate excitation of the transverse coordinate field, they are BPS-saturated solutions. The Coulomb point charge solutions turn out to represent, with considerable fidelity, fundamental strings attached to the brane (their magnetic counterparts describe D1-branes attached to D3-branes). We also show that the S-matrix for small excitations propagating on the point charge solution is consistent with (and gives further illuminating information about) Polchinski's effective open string boundary condition.
- Publication:
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Nuclear Physics B
- Pub Date:
- February 1998
- DOI:
- 10.1016/S0550-3213(97)00700-1
- arXiv:
- arXiv:hep-th/9708147
- Bibcode:
- 1998NuPhB.513..198C
- Keywords:
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- High Energy Physics - Theory
- E-Print:
- 16 pages, 3 figures. Minor typos fixed