Supersymmetric Baryonic Branes
Joaquim Gomis, Alfonso Ramallo, Joan Simon, Paul Townsend
TL;DR
This work establishes energy bounds for baryonic D5- and M5-branes in the near-horizon backgrounds of stacked D3- and M5-branes, showing that states saturating these bounds preserve 1/4 of the bulk supersymmetry. The analysis links Bogomol’nyi-type bounds to κ-symmetry via first-order BPS equations, and it extends known baryon-vertex configurations to large classes of multi-angle solutions on $S^5$ and $S^4$, including nontrivial branch-cut structures. In the M-theory context, the near-horizon D5/M5 results realize the baryon-string vertex of the $(2,0)$ theory and provide a worldvolume description of the Hanany–Witten effect, with analogous structures in the full backgrounds where partially-wrapped branes describe HW-like couplings. The paper thus connects brane energy bounds, supersymmetry, and localized charge sources to concrete holographic interpretations of baryon vertices and brane intersections in both type IIB and M-theory frameworks. Overall, it advances the understanding of how worldvolume dynamics encode nonperturbative vertices and flux quanta in AdS/CFT settings, while highlighting rich families of supersymmetric, less symmetric solutions and signaling open questions about their complete solution spaces.
Abstract
We derive an energy bound for a `baryonic' D5-brane probe in the $adS_5\times S^5$ background near the horizon of $N$ D3-branes. Configurations saturating the bound are shown to be 1/4 supersymmetric $S^5$-wrapped D5-branes, with a total Born-Infeld charge $N$. Previous results are recovered as a special case. We derive a similar energy bound for a `baryonic' M5-brane probe in the background of $N$ M5-branes. Configurations saturating the bound are again 1/4 supersymmetric and, in the $adS_7\times S^4$ near-horizon limit, provide a worldvolume realization of the `baryon string' vertex of the (2,0)-supersymmetric six-dimensional conformal field theory on coincident M5-branes. For the full M5-background we find a worldvolume realization of the Hanany-Witten effect in M-theory.