D-brane interactions in type IIB plane-wave background

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the static interaction diagrams between D-branes in a type IIB plane wave background, revealing how these interactions depend on the background flux and supersymmetry preservation, with results applicable to both instantons and Lorentzian branes.

Contribution

It provides explicit calculations of D-brane interactions in a plane wave background, extending flat-space formulas and analyzing supersymmetry conditions for consistent string descriptions.

Findings

Interaction formulas depend on Ramond-Ramond flux in a non-trivial way.

Open and closed string descriptions are consistent under modular transformations when supersymmetry is preserved.

Results apply to both Euclidean instantons and Lorentzian D-branes.

Abstract

The cylinder diagrams that determine the static interactions between pairs of Dp-branes in the type IIB plane wave background are evaluated. The resulting expressions are elegant generalizations of the flat-space formulae that depend on the value of the Ramond-Ramond flux of the background in a non-trivial manner. The closed-string and open-string descriptions consistently transform into each other under a modular transformation only when each of the interacting D-branes separately preserves half the supersymmetries. These results are derived for configurations of euclidean signature D(p+1)-instantons but also generalize to lorentzian signature Dp-branes.