Giant Hedge-Hogs: Spikes on Giant Gravitons

TL;DR

This paper studies giant gravitons in a plane-wave background, deriving an effective gauge theory description that includes electric dipoles, which are interpreted as open strings piercing the giant graviton, extending the BIon concept.

Contribution

It provides a low energy effective light-cone Hamiltonian for giant gravitons, introducing the concept of BIGGons as open strings on the three-sphere giant graviton, and connects to a worldsheet description.

Findings

Effective U(1) gauge theory on R x S^3 for giant gravitons

Electric dipoles (BIGGons) can form on the giant graviton

Connection to a two-dimensional worldsheet description

Abstract

We consider giant gravitons on the maximally supersymmetric plane-wave background of type IIB string theory. Fixing the light-cone gauge, we work out the low energy effective light-cone Hamiltonian of the three-sphere giant graviton. At first order, this is a U(1) gauge theory on R x S^3. We place sources in this effective gauge theory. Although non-vanishing net electric charge configurations are disallowed by Gauss' law, electric dipoles can be formed. From the string theory point of view these dipoles can be understood as open strings piercing the three-sphere, generalizing the usual BIons to the giant gravitons, BIGGons. Our results can be used to give a two dimensional (worldsheet) description of giant gravitons, similar to Polchinski's description for the usual D-branes, in agreement with the discussions of hep-th/0204196.