Thermodynamics of D0-branes in matrix theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates the thermodynamic behavior of D0-branes using matrix theory, revealing a short-range attractive potential at finite temperature and emphasizing the importance of moduli space integration for accurate thermal state reproduction.

Contribution

It provides the first 1-loop calculation of the static potential between D0-branes at finite temperature within matrix theory, highlighting the effects of supersymmetry breaking.

Findings

The static potential is short-ranged and attractive.

Thermal states are accurately reproduced only with careful moduli space integration.

Results align with superstring theory computations when properly accounting for classical solutions.

Abstract

We examine the matrix theory representation of D0-brane dynamics at finite temperature. In this case, violation of supersymmetry by temperature leads to a non-trivial static potential between D0-branes at any finite temperature. We compute the static potential in the 1-loop approximation and show that it is short-ranged and attractive. We compare the result with the computations in superstring theory. We show that thermal states of D0-branes can be reproduced by matrix theory only when certain care is taken in integration over the moduli space of classical solutions in compactified time.