Supersymmetry and dual string solitons (original) (raw)
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Supersymmetric String Solitons
1991
These notes are based on lectures given by C. Callan and J. Harvey at the 1991 Trieste Spring School on String Theory and Quantum Gravity. The subject is the construction of supersymmetric soliton solutions to superstring theory. A brief review of solitons and instantons in supersymmetric theories is presented. Yang-Mills instantons are then used to construct soliton solutions to heterotic string theory of various types. The structure of these solutions is discussed using low-energy field theory, sigma-model arguments, and in one case an exact construction of the underlying superconformal field theory.
Supersymmetric solutions in three-dimensional heterotic string theory
Nuclear Physics B, 1998
We consider the low-energy effective field theory of heterotic string theory compactified on a seven-torus, and we construct electrically charged as well as more general solitonic solutions. These solutions preserve 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 of N = 8, D = 3 supersymmetry and have Killing spinors which exist due to cancellation of holonomies. The associated space-time line elements do not exhibit the conical structure that often arises in 2 + 1 dimensional gravity theories.
Nuclear Physics B, 1990
A low-energy analysis of macroscopic superstrings is presented and various analogies between these superstrings and solitons in supersymmetric theories are discussed. These include the existence of exact multi-string solutions of the low-energy supergravity super-Yang-Mills equations of motion and a Bogomol'nyi bound for the energy per unit length which is saturated by these solutions. Arguments are presented that these features will persist to all orders in a. The connection between chiral fermion zero modes on the string and partially broken supersymmetry is also discussed.
On the compactification of the closed supersymmetric string
Physics Letters B, 1986
If D dimensions of the closed N = 1 supersymmetric string are compactified on a torus, solitonic excitations can enlarge the [U(1)] ° Kaluza-Klein gauge symmetry to [SU(2)] °. The "'old formalism" is extended to obtain the N = 2 supersymmetric string. In its compactification to four dimensions, massless solitons break N = 8 to N = 4 supersymmetry.
Brane solutions in strings with broken supersymmetry and dilaton tadpoles
Physics Letters B, 2000
The tachyon-free nonsupersymmetric string theories in ten dimensions have dilaton tadpoles which forbid a Minkowski vacuum. We determine the maximally symmetric backgrounds for the U Sp(32) Type I string and the SO(16) × SO(16) heterotic string. The static solutions exhibit nine dimensional Poincaré symmetry and have finite 9D Planck and Yang-Mills constants. The low energy geometry is given by a ten dimensional manifold with two boundaries separated by a finite distance which suggests a spontaneous compactification of the ten dimensional string theory.
Bertotti-Robinson and soliton string solutions of D = 5 minimal supergravity
Physical Review D, 2014
We report on a series of new solutions to five-dimensional minimal supergravity. Our method applies to space-times with two commuting Killing symmetries and consists in combining dimensional reduction on two-spaces of constant curvature with reduction on a two-torus. The first gives rise to various generalized Bertotti-Robinson solutions supported by electric and magnetic fluxes, which presumably describe the near-horizon regions of black holes and black rings (strings). The second provides generating techniques based on U-duality of the corresponding three-dimensional sigma model. We identify duality transformations relating the above solutions to asymptotically flat ones and obtain new globally regular dyonic solitons. Some new extremal asymptotically flat multi-center solutions are constructed too. We also show that geodesic solutions of three-dimensional sigma models passing through the same target space point generically split into disjoint classes which cannot be related by the isotropy subgroup of U-duality.
String and five-brane solitons: Singular or non-singular?
Nuclear Physics B, 1992
We ask whether the recently discovered superstring and superfivebrane solutions of D = 10 supergravity admit the interpretation of non-singular solitons even though, in the absence of Yang-Mills fields, they exhibit curvature singularities at the origin. We answer the question using a test probe/source approach, and find that the nature of the singularity is probe-dependent. If the test probe and source are both superstrings or both superfivebranes, one falls into the other in a finite proper time and the singularity is real, whereas if one is a superstring and the other a superfivebrane it takes an infinite proper time (the force is repulsive!) and the singularity is harmless. Black strings and fivebranes, on the other hand, always display real singularities.
Macroscopic superstrings as interpolating solitons
Physics Letters B, 1994
It is known that, in string sigma-model metric, the 'extreme' fivebrane solution of D=10 supergravity interpolates between D=10 Minkowski spacetime and a supersymmetric S 3 compactification to a linear dilaton vacuum. We show here that, in fivebrane sigma-model metric, the extreme string solution of D=10 supergravity interpolates between Minkowski spacetime and a hitherto unknown supersymmetric S 7 compactification of d=10 supergravity to a three-dimensional anti-de Sitter generalization of the linear dilaton vacuum, which may be invariantly characterized in terms of conformal Killing vectors. The dilaton field diverges near the string core but this divergence may be eliminated by re-interpreting the string solution as the extreme membrane solution of 11-dimensional supergravity. We show that the latter has an analytic extension through a regular degenerate event horizon to an interior region containing a curvature singularity. We obtain analogous results for other extended object solutions of supergravity theories. * If d = 1 the potential A is a one-form and there arises the possibility of a Kaluza-Klein interpretation of it as an off-diagonal component of the (D + 1)-metric. This allows other values of D, e.g. D = 4, but these cases are rather dissimilar to the D = 10 macroscopic superstring and will not be discussed here.
Non-Abelian solitons in N =4 gauged supergravity and leading order string theory
Physical Review D, 1998
We study static, spherically symmetric, and purely magnetic solutions of the N=4 gauged supergravity in four dimensions. A systematic analysis of the supersymmetry conditions reveals solutions which preserve 1/4 of the supersymmetries and are characterized by a BPS-monopole-type gauge field and a globally hyperbolic, everywhere regular geometry. We show that the theory in which these solutions arise can be obtained via compactification of ten-dimensional supergravity on the group manifold. This result is then used to lift the solutions to ten dimensions.
Navigating into the realm of Non-Supersymmetric String Theories
2016
For more than two decades, remarkable progress has been made in the construction of supersymmetric Standard Model-like theories from the heterotic string theory. In particular, considerable effort has been invested in studying the abundant phenomenological features of heterotic strings exhibiting N = 1 spacetime supersymmetry. At the same time, their non-supersymmetric counterparts have received little attention on the grounds that strings which do not exhibit spacetime supersymmetry admit large one-loop dilaton tadpoles, and are therefore unstable. Nonetheless, in this epoch of data acquisition from high-luminosity experiments, the observational absence of supersymmetry is striking. Consequently, non-supersymmetric theories receive a profound interest in the particle physics community. In this thesis, a class of non-supersymmetric, tachyon-free, four-dimensional string models is constructed via a string generalisation of Scherk-Schwarz compactification. Such models demonstrate grea...