An unusual BPS equation

Abstract

We prove a conjectured relation between the energy-momentum and the displacement norm of superconformal defects. The proof completes earlier results, and shows that supersymmetry identifies two natural notions of brane tension in Anti-de Sitter gravity. As a byproduct we show that a modification of the energy-momentum tensor that removes the stress of static superconformal defects, ensures also that the radiation these emit obeys the Null Energy Condition. This sheds new light on the radiation-reaction problem for moving charges.

33 pages; typos corrected and minor changes; final version to appear in JHEP