Brane-Antibrane Systems at Finite Temperature and the Entropy of Black Branes

TL;DR

This paper develops a microscopic brane-antibrane model at finite temperature that explains black brane entropy and thermodynamics, aligning with supergravity results and revealing insights into black hole states.

Contribution

It introduces a finite-temperature brane-antibrane framework that matches supergravity entropy calculations and explains thermodynamic properties of black branes.

Findings

Microscopic entropy agrees with supergravity up to a factor of 2^(p/p+1).

Black brane thermodynamics interpreted via brane-antibrane annihilation.

States resembling black holes and lower-dimensional black branes are identified.

Abstract

We consider D-brane/anti-D-brane systems at T>0. Starting at the closed string vacuum, we argue that a finite temperature leads to the reappearance of open string degrees of freedom. We also show that, at a sufficiently large temperature, the open string vacuum becomes stable. Building upon this observation and previous work by Horowitz, Maldacena and Strominger, we formulate a microscopic brane-antibrane model for the non-extremal black three-brane in ten dimensions (as well as for the black two- and five-branes in eleven dimensions). Under reasonable assumptions, and using known results from the AdS/CFT correspondence, the microscopic entropy agrees with the supergravity result up to a factor of 2^(p/p+1), with p the dimension of the brane. The negative specific heat and pressure of the black brane have a simple interpretation in terms of brane-antibrane annihilation. We also find in the model states resembling black holes and other lower-dimensional black branes.