Tachyons, Supertubes and Brane/Anti-Brane Systems

TL;DR

This paper constructs and analyzes supertubes with arbitrary shapes, demonstrating their stability through Born-Infeld fields and supergravity, and explores the supersymmetric D2/anti-D2 system with no open-string tachyons.

Contribution

It introduces supertubes with arbitrary cross sections, showing their stability and providing solutions in the M(atrix) model, and analyzes the D2/anti-D2 system for tachyon absence.

Findings

Supertubes can have arbitrary cross sections and remain stable.

Stability is due to Born-Infeld fields balancing D2-brane tension.

No open-string tachyons are found in the D2/anti-D2 system.

Abstract

We find supertubes with arbitrary (and not necessarily planar) cross section; the stability against the D2-brane tension is due to a compensation by the local momentum generated by Born-Infeld fields. Stability against long-range supergravity forces is also established. We find the corresponding solutions of the infinite-N M(atrix) model. The supersymmetric D2/anti-D2 system is a special case of the general supertube, and we show that there are no open-string tachyons in this system via a computation of the open-string one-loop vacuum energy.