Unstable Giants

TL;DR

This paper finds unstable giant graviton solutions in a specific non-supersymmetric background, demonstrating quantitative agreement between gauge theory and gravity descriptions despite their instability.

Contribution

It presents the first analysis of giant gravitons in Frolov's three-parameter background, extending the gauge/gravity correspondence to non-supersymmetric settings.

Findings

Giant gravitons are unstable with higher energy than point gravitons.

Quantitative agreement between gauge theory and gravity descriptions of open strings.

Extension of gauge/gravity tests to non-supersymmetric backgrounds.

Abstract

We find giant graviton solutions in Frolov's three parameter generalization of the Lunin-Maldacena background. The background we study has $\tilde{\gamma}_1=0$ and $\tilde{\gamma}_2=\tilde{\gamma}_3=\tilde{\gamma}$. This class of backgrounds provide a non-superymmetric example of the gauge theory/gravity correspondence that can be tested quantitatively, as recently shown by Frolov, Roiban and Tseytlin. The giant graviton solutions we find have a greater energy than the point gravitons, making them unstable states. Despite this, we find striking quantitative agreement between the gauge theory and gravity descriptions of open strings attached to the giant.