Tachyons, Supertubes and Brane/Anti-Brane Systems

TL;DR

The paper analyzes D2-brane supertubes with arbitrary cross-sections in Minkowski IIA, showing stability against tension via Poynting momentum from crossed Born-Infeld fields with $|E|=1$ and arbitrary $B\(\sigma)$$, and stability against long-range supergravity forces. It provides an M-theory perspective through the light-front supermembrane, connects to the infinite-N Matrix model, and demonstrates absence of open-string tachyons for D2/anti-D2 in this setup. Central-charge arguments yield bounds on energy, linear and angular momenta, and clarify the role of charges and momentum in stabilizing non-circular cross-sections. A corresponding fully explicit Type IIA supergravity solution supports both closed and open cross-sections, with causality bounds that prevent pathologies. Together, these results generalize the family of stable, supersymmetric expanded-brane configurations and unify DBI, supergravity, and Matrix Theory descriptions.

Abstract

We find supertubes with arbitrary (and not necessarily planar) cross section; the stability against the D2-brane tension is due to a compensation by the local momentum generated by Born-Infeld fields. Stability against long-range supergravity forces is also established. We find the corresponding solutions of the infinite-N M(atrix) model. The supersymmetric D2/anti-D2 system is a special case of the general supertube, and we show that there are no open-string tachyons in this system via a computation of the open-string one-loop vacuum energy.