Profiling the Brane Drain in a Nonsupersymmetric Orbifold

TL;DR

This paper investigates D-branes in a nonsupersymmetric orbifold with tachyon perturbation, revealing a complex phase-dependent relationship between fractional branes and Coulomb/Higgs branch branes through detailed mapping and mirror symmetry analysis.

Contribution

It constructs a detailed map between fractional branes and Coulomb/Higgs branch branes in a nonsupersymmetric orbifold, highlighting the phase dependence of this relationship.

Findings

Coulomb branch branes account for the brane drain from the Higgs branch.

The map between fractional and branch branes depends intricately on the tachyon phase.

Discontinuous changes in D-brane shape occur with phase variations in the mirror Landau-Ginzburg model.

Abstract

We study D-branes in a nonsupersymmetric orbifold of type C^2/\Gamma, perturbed by a tachyon condensate, using a gauged linear sigma model. The RG flow has both higgs and coulomb branches, and each branch supports different branes. The coulomb branch branes account for the ``brane drain'' from the higgs branch, but their precise relation to fractional branes has hitherto been unknown. Building on the results of hep-th/0403016 we construct, in detail, the map between fractional branes and the coulomb/higgs branch branes for two examples in the type 0 theory. This map depends on the phase of the tachyon condensate in a surprising and intricate way. In the mirror Landau-Ginzburg picture the dependence on the tachyon phase is manifested by discontinuous changes in the shape of the D-brane.