Decay of Excited D-branes

TL;DR

This paper calculates interactions of massless D-brane excitations, revealing their similarities to type I theory, and uncovers a novel amplitude structure that indicates D-branes' effective thickness growth and their role in Hawking radiation.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed calculation of leading order interactions of massless D-brane excitations and identifies unique amplitude features related to Hawking radiation.

Findings

4-point functions match type I theory

Amplitude shows infinite zeros and poles

High momentum decay indicates growing D-brane thickness

Abstract

We calculate the leading order interactions of massless D-brane excitations. Their 4-point functions are found to be identical to those found in type I theory. The amplitude for two massless D-brane fluctuations to produce a massless closed string is found to possess interesting new structure. As a function of its single kinematic invariant, it displays an infinite sequence of alternating zeros and poles. At high transverse momenta, this amplitude decays exponentially, indicating a growing effective thickness of the D-brane. This amplitude is the leading process by which non-extremal D-branes produce Hawking radiation.