D-Brane Interactions in a Gravitational Shock Wave Background

TL;DR

This paper investigates how D-branes interact in a gravitational shock wave background by calculating the cylinder diagram using boundary states, revealing consistency with flat space results when the shock wave disappears.

Contribution

It introduces a method to analyze D-brane interactions in shock wave backgrounds using boundary states and confirms consistency with flat space results.

Findings

Interaction amplitude reduces to flat space result when shock wave vanishes

Boundary states effectively describe D-branes in curved backgrounds

Method can be applied to other curved spacetime scenarios

Abstract

We study D-branes in the background of a gravitational shock wave. We consider the case of parallel D-branes located on opposite sides with respect to the shock wave. Their interaction is studied by evaluating the cylinder diagram using the boundary states technique. Boundary states are defined at each D-brane and their scalar product is evaluated after propagation through the shock wave. Taking the limit where the gravitational shock wave vanishes we show that the amplitude evaluated is consistent with the flat space-time result.