Dilaton Dynamics from Production of Tensionless Membranes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how membrane production in 11D supergravity influences cosmological solutions, revealing that certain states can significantly affect the dilaton dynamics and favor vacua near duality fixed points.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of membrane state production, including quantum effects, and shows how these states can dynamically attract the dilaton to a duality fixed point, extending understanding of M-theory moduli.

Findings

Production of membrane states is suppressed by the Planck scale in standard spectra.

Enhanced symmetry spectra can lead to finite, significant membrane production.

Membrane dynamics can attract the dilaton to the S-duality fixed point at g_s=1.

Abstract

In this paper we consider classical and quantum corrections to cosmological solutions of 11D SUGRA coming from dynamics of membrane states. We first consider the supermembrane spectrum following the approach of Russo and Tseytlin for consistent quantization. We calculate the production rate of BPS membrane bound states in a cosmological background and find that such effects are generically suppressed by the Planck scale, as expected. However, for a modified brane spectrum possessing enhanced symmetry, production can be finite and significant. We stress that this effect could not be anticipated given only a knowledge of the low-energy effective theory. Once on-shell, inclusion of these states leads to an attractive force pulling the dilaton towards a fixed point of S-duality, namely $g_s=1$. Although the SUGRA description breaks down in this regime, inclusion of the enhanced states suggests that the center of M-theory moduli space is a dynamical attractor. Morever, our results seem to suggest that string dynamics does indeed favor a vacuum near fixed points of duality.