Dynamics of D-brane Black Holes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the relationship between D-brane black holes in supergravity and their dual quantum field theories, analyzing particle absorption, entropy, and duality with a focus on conformal field theory and supersymmetric gauge theories.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of particle absorption and greybody factors in D-brane black holes, revealing dualities and non-renormalization properties in N=4 gauge theory.

Findings

Absorption cross-sections match conformal field theory predictions

Duality between supergravity fields and gauge theory operators established

Large anomalous dimensions at strong coupling suggest simplified gauge theory behavior

Abstract

We explore the interplay between black holes in supergravity and quantum field theories on the world-volumes of D-branes. A brief summary of black hole entropy calculations for D-brane black holes is followed by a detailed study of particle absorption by black holes whose string theory description involves D-branes intersecting along a string. A conformal field theory with large central charge describes the low-energy excitations of this string. The absorption cross-sections give rise to greybody factors in Hawking radiation processes which are characteristic of conformal field theory at finite temperature. Particle absorption by extremal three-branes is examined next, with particular attention to the implications for supersymmetric gauge theory in four dimensions. A fascinating duality between supergravity and gauge theory emerges from the study of these processes. Fields of supergravity are dual to local operators in the gauge theory. A non-renormalization theorem of N=4 gauge theory helps explain why certain aspects of the duality can be explored perturbatively. Anomalous dimensions of a large class of local operators in the gauge theory are shown to become large at strong 't Hooft coupling, signaling a possible simplification of N=4 gauge theory in this limit.