Effective potential in non-supersymmetric SU(N) x SU(N) gauge theory and interactions of type 0 D3-branes

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the short-distance interactions of D3-branes in type 0 string theory through a non-supersymmetric SU(N) x SU(N) gauge theory, revealing force behaviors and stability conditions of dyonic brane configurations.

Contribution

It computes the one-loop effective potential in a non-supersymmetric gauge theory derived from string theory, exploring stability and interaction patterns of electric and magnetic D3-branes.

Findings

Same-type branes repel at short distances.

Electric and magnetic branes attract each other.

Self-dual brane configurations are stable against certain separations.

Abstract

We study some aspects of short-distance interaction between parallel D3-branes in type 0 string theory as described by the corresponding world-volume gauge theory. We compute the one-loop effective potential in the non-supersymmetric SU(N) x SU(N) gauge theory (which is a Z_2 projection of the U(2N) n=4 SYM theory) representing dyonic branes composed of N electric and N magnetic D3-branes. The branes of the same type repel at short distances, but an electric and a magnetic brane attract, and the forces between self-dual branes cancel. The self-dual configuration (with the positions of the electric and the magnetic branes, i.e. the diagonal entries of the adjoint scalar fields, being the same) is stable against separation of one electric or one magnetic brane, but is unstable against certain modes of separation of several same-type branes. This instability should be suppressed in the large N limit, i.e. should be irrelevant for the large N CFT interpretation of the gauge theory suggested in hep-th/9901101.