Shock Waves and Cosmological Matrix Models

TL;DR

This paper discovers shock wave solutions in cosmological backgrounds with null singularities, showing their matrix descriptions, supersymmetry breaking, and implications for D0-brane interactions and matrix model perturbation theory.

Contribution

It provides the first explicit shock wave solutions in cosmological matrix backgrounds and analyzes their effects on supersymmetry and D0-brane interactions.

Findings

Shock wave solutions break all supersymmetry.

Interaction between static D0-branes cancels.

Perturbative expansion of matrix model breaks down in these backgrounds.

Abstract

We find the shock wave solutions in a class of cosmological backgrounds with a null singularity, each of these backgrounds admits a matrix description. A shock wave solution breaks all supersymmetry meanwhile indicates that the interaction between two static D0-branes cancel, thus provides basic evidence for the matrix description. The probe action of a D0-brane in the background of another suggests that the usual perturbative expansion of matrix model breaks down.