Lightlike p-Branes: Mass "Inflation" and Lightlike Braneworlds

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Lagrangian framework for lightlike p-branes, exploring their dynamics in gravitational backgrounds, revealing phenomena like horizon straddling, mass inflation, and stable ground states in braneworld scenarios.

Contribution

It provides a dual formulation of lightlike p-branes and analyzes their behavior in symmetric gravitational fields, highlighting novel effects such as mass inflation and horizon interaction.

Findings

Lightlike p-branes exhibit horizon straddling behavior.

Mass inflation occurs for codimension-one lightlike branes.

Stable ground states are identified for codimension-two lightlike braneworlds.

Abstract

Lagrangian description of lightlike p-branes is presented in two equivalent forms - a Polyakov-type formulation and a dual to it Nambu-Goto-type formulation. Next, the properties of lightlike brane dynamics in generic gravitational backgrounds of spherically symmetric and axially symmetric type are discussed in some detail: "horizon straddling" and "mass inflation" effects for codimension-one lightlike branes and ground state behavior of codimension-two lightlike "braneworlds".