Decay Modes of Intersecting Fluxbranes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the decay processes of intersecting fluxbranes, showing that supersymmetric configurations are stable in higher dimensions and proposing the existence of stable intersecting fluxbranes in type 0A string theory.

Contribution

It explicitly analyzes decay modes of intersecting fluxbranes, demonstrating stability conditions and extending the concept to type 0A string theory.

Findings

Decay modes involve nucleation of spherical branes

Supersymmetric intersecting fluxbranes are stable in dimensions >4

Stable intersecting fluxbranes are predicted in type 0A string theory

Abstract

Just as the single fluxbrane is quantum mechanically unstable to the nucleation of a locally charged spherical brane, so intersecting fluxbranes are unstable to various decay modes. Each individual element of the intersection can decay via the nucleation of a spherical brane, but uncharged spheres can also be nucleated in the region of intersection. For special values of the fluxes, however, intersecting fluxbranes are supersymmetric, and so are expected to be stable. We explicitly consider the instanton describing the decay modes of the two--element intersection (an F5-brane in the string theory context), and show that in dimensions greater than four the action for the decay mode of the supersymmetric intersection diverges. This observation allows us to show that stable intersecting fluxbranes should also exist in type 0A string theory.