Persistent anti-brane singularities

TL;DR

The paper addresses infrared singularities arising from anti-branes in flux backgrounds, focusing on anti-D6 branes and their full non-linear backreaction. By computing the D8 polarization potential for branes dissolved in a D8 shell, it shows that the potential lacks a metastable minimum, yielding a universal no-go for brane polarization to resolve the singularity. This no-polarization result depends only on infrared data and is insensitive to ultraviolet completions, casting doubt on polarization-based resolutions for anti-brane singularities, including those of anti-D3 branes in Klebanov-Strassler. The authors discuss the implications for KS-like systems and emphasize the need for fully backreacted KS analyses to confirm whether polarization can ever cure such singularities, suggesting alternative decay channels or UV completions may be required.

Abstract

Anti-D-branes inserted in warped throat geometries (supported by fluxes that carry D-brane charges) develop unphysical singularities. It has been argued that these singularities could be resolved when one goes beyond the linearized approximation or includes the effects of brane polarization. In this paper we consider anti-D6 branes, whose singularities have been shown to exist at the full non-linear level, and demonstrate that there is no D8 brane polarization that can resolve the singularity. We comment on the potential implications of this result for the resolution of anti-D3 brane singularities in the Klebanov-Strassler geometry.