Brane Worlds in Collision

TL;DR

This paper presents exact supergravity solutions modeling colliding D3-branes in a Calabi-Yau background, revealing how such collisions split spacetime and affect the universe's structure.

Contribution

It provides new exact solutions for brane collisions in supergravity, including scenarios with brane annihilation, advancing understanding of brane dynamics in string theory.

Findings

Collision causes spacetime to split into disconnected regions.

Near branes, the metric remains static during and after collision.

Includes solutions for brane annihilation scenarios.

Abstract

We obtain an exact solution of the supergravity equations of motion in which the four-dimensional observed universe is one of a number of colliding D3-branes in a Calabi-Yau background. The collision results in the ten-dimensional spacetime splitting into disconnected regions, bounded by curvature singularities. However, near the D3-branes the metric remains static during and after the collision. We also obtain a general class of solutions representing $p$-brane collisions in arbitrary dimensions, including one in which the universe ends with the mutual annihilation of a positive-tension and negative-tension 3-brane.