Adhering 0-branes to 6-branes and 8-branes
Washington Taylor
TL;DR
The paper constructs explicit non-supersymmetric, classically stable configurations of 0-branes bound to higher-dimensional branes on tori by using constant-curvature gauge fields: a 4×(0+6) system on $T^6$ and an 8×(0+8) system on $T^8$. Via T-duality, these correspond to diagonally wrapped 3-branes and 4-branes, respectively, providing insight into non-BPS bound states and their stability. Although the total energy exceeds that of separated constituents, the configurations are stable to quadratic fluctuations and may represent long-lived resonances with potential applications to M(atrix) theory and black hole physics. The work also highlights rich connections to moduli spaces of higher-dimensional self-dual configurations and motivates further study of quantum corrections and moduli in these non-supersymmetric setups.
Abstract
A Yang-Mills solution is constructed on T^6 which corresponds to a brane configuration composed purely of 0-branes and 6-branes. This configuration breaks all supersymmetries and has an energy greater than the sum of the energies of its components; nonetheless, the configuration is stable classically, at least to quadratic order. An analogous construction is also given for a system of 0-branes and 8-branes on T^8. These constructions may prove to be useful for describing 6-branes and 8-branes in M(atrix) theory.