BPS D-branes on Non-supersymmetric Cycles

TL;DR

This paper investigates stable non-supersymmetric D-branes on non-supersymmetric cycles in Calabi-Yau and K3 manifolds, describing their conformal field theory models and gauge theories, and exploring their relation to BPS branes.

Contribution

It provides a solvable conformal field theory description of stable non-supersymmetric D-branes and analyzes their connection to supersymmetric configurations.

Findings

Stable non-supersymmetric D-branes can be described by boundary conformal field theories.

World-volume theories of these branes are non-supersymmetric U(N) gauge theories.

Marginal deformations connect non-supersymmetric branes to supersymmetric pairs.

Abstract

In certain regions of the moduli space of K3 and Calabi-Yau manifolds, D-branes wrapped on non-supersymmetric cycles may give rise to stable configurations. We show that in the orbifold limit, some of these stable configurations can be described by solvable boundary conformal field theories. The world-volume theory of N coincident branes of this type is described by a non-supersymmetric U(N) gauge theory. At the boundary of the region of stability, there are marginal deformations connecting the non-supersymmetric brane to a pair of D-branes wrapped on supersymmetric cycles. We also discuss various relationships between BPS and non-BPS D-branes of type II string theories.