Metastability in Bubbling AdS Space

TL;DR

This paper investigates the metastability of probe M2 branes in bubbling AdS geometries, revealing how they can polarize into M5 shells and decay, indicating possible metastable states in the dual theory.

Contribution

It demonstrates the existence of metastable M5 brane shells formed by polarized M2 branes with opposite orientation to background flux in bubbling geometries.

Findings

Supersymmetric M2 branes polarize into M5 shells creating new bubbles.

Oppositely oriented M2 branes can form metastable M5 shells.

Metastable states decay via brane-flux annihilation.

Abstract

We study the dynamics of probe M5 branes with dissolved M2 charge in bubbling geometries with SO(4) x SO(4) symmetry. These solutions were constructed by Bena-Warner and Lin-Lunin-Maldacena and correspond to the vacua of the maximally supersymmetric mass-deformed M2 brane theory. We find that supersymmetric probe M2 branes polarize into M5 brane shells whose backreaction creates an additional bubble in the geometry. We explicitly check that the supersymmetric polarization potential agrees with the one found within the Polchinski-Strassler approximation. The main result of this paper is that probe M2 branes whose orientation is opposite to the background flux can polarize into metastable M5 brane shells. These decay to a supersymmetric configuration via brane-flux annihilation. Our findings suggest the existence of metastable states in the mass-deformed M2 brane theory.