Brane Physics in M-theory

Abstract

The thesis begins with an introduction to M-theory (at a graduate student's level), starting from perturbative string theory and proceeding to dualities, D-branes and finally Matrix theory. The following chapter treats, in a self-contained way, of general classical p-brane solutions. Black and extremal branes are reviewed, along with their semi-classical thermodynamics. We then focus on intersecting extremal branes, the intersection rules being derived both with and without the explicit use of supersymmetry. The last three chapters comprise more advanced aspects of brane physics, such as the dynamics of open branes, the little theories on the world-volume of branes and how the four dimensional Schwarzschild black hole can be mapped to an extremal configuration of branes, thus allowing for a statistical interpretation of its entropy. The original results were already reported in hep-th/9701042, hep-th/9704190, hep-th/9710027 and hep-th/9801053.

206 pages, Latex (three times), no figures. PhD thesis (Universite Libre de Bruxelles). One reference modified

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Dynamics of intersecting brane systems -- Classification and their applications --
• Plasma photoemission from string theory
• Dynamical D4-D8 and D3-D7 branes in supergravity
• Holographic current correlators at finite coupling and scattering off a supersymmetric plasma
• Cosmology in p-brane systems
• Dynamics of partially localized brane systems
• Probe brane dynamics on cosmological brane backgrounds
• The fundamental non critical string
• Regge behavior saves String Theory from causality violations
• Curvature in Special Base Conformal Warped Products
• Cosmic acceleration in models with density dependent moduli