# nLab black brane

Contents

### Context

#### Gravity

gravity, supergravity

# Contents

## Idea

The theory of gravity in $3+1$ dimensions famously has black hole solutions, being the limiting configuration of a point mass gravitational source. In higher dimensional gravity, and in particular in higher dimensional supergravity, there are analogous solutions, which however are limiting configurations of a gravitational source that is supported on a line, or a surface, or a higher dimensional space. For a surface one might speak of black membrane solutions hence generally of black brane solutions.

Particularly the BPS states among the black branes in supergravity, i.e. those solutions that carry Killing spinors, include configurations that look like the strong-coupling version of the Green-Schwarz super p-branes.

(table taken from Blumenhagen-Lüst-Theisen 13, Chapter 18.5)

The near-horizon geometry of these black branes is generically that of anti de Sitter spacetime times a sphere. To the extent that the worldvolume theory of the branes is a superconformal QFT, this is the origin of the AdS-CFT correspondence.

## Properties

### Weak coupling correspondence

The types of black branes that can occur in theories of supergravity that are obtained from the maximal 11-dimensional supergravity match precisely the types of D-branes and NS-branes that appear in the corresponding perturbative superstring theories.

The idea is that both these brane-phenomena are aspects of one single entity:

This duality of the brane picture is at the heart of the AdS/CFT correspondence. See there for more details.

## Examples

Table of branes appearing in supergravity/string theory (for classification see at brane scan).

branein supergravitycharged under gauge fieldhas worldvolume theory
black branesupergravityhigher gauge fieldSCFT
D-branetype IIRR-fieldsuper Yang-Mills theory
$(D = 2n)$type IIA$\,$$\,$
D(-2)-brane$\,$$\,$
D0-brane$\,$$\,$BFSS matrix model
D2-brane$\,$$\,$$\,$
D4-brane$\,$$\,$D=5 super Yang-Mills theory with Khovanov homology observables
D6-brane$\,$$\,$D=7 super Yang-Mills theory
D8-brane$\,$$\,$
$(D = 2n+1)$type IIB$\,$$\,$
D(-1)-brane$\,$$\,$$\,$
D1-brane$\,$$\,$2d CFT with BH entropy
D3-brane$\,$$\,$N=4 D=4 super Yang-Mills theory
D5-brane$\,$$\,$$\,$
D7-brane$\,$$\,$$\,$
D9-brane$\,$$\,$$\,$
(p,q)-string$\,$$\,$$\,$
(D25-brane)(bosonic string theory)
NS-branetype I, II, heteroticcircle n-connection$\,$
string$\,$B2-field2d SCFT
NS5-brane$\,$B6-fieldlittle string theory
D-brane for topological string$\,$
A-brane$\,$
B-brane$\,$
M-brane11D SuGra/M-theorycircle n-connection$\,$
M2-brane$\,$C3-fieldABJM theory, BLG model
M5-brane$\,$C6-field6d (2,0)-superconformal QFT
M9-brane/O9-planeheterotic string theory
M-wave
topological M2-branetopological M-theoryC3-field on G2-manifold
topological M5-brane$\,$C6-field on G2-manifold
S-brane
SM2-brane,
membrane instanton
M5-brane instanton
D3-brane instanton
solitons on M5-brane6d (2,0)-superconformal QFT
self-dual stringself-dual B-field
3-brane in 6d

## References

### Prehistory

• Albert Einstein, Leopold Infeld, B. Hoffmann, The gravitational equations and the problem of motion, Annals of Mathematics, Vol 39, No. 1, 1938

### General

Original articles include

The M5-brane was maybe first found as a black brane of 11-dimensional supergravity (the black fivebrane) in

The observation that black $p$-branes metric for odd $p$ are completely non-singular is due to

The suggestion that extremal/BPS state black branes are the strong coupling incarnation of fundamental branes originates in

Review includes,

and in the context of multiple M2-branes in the BLG model:

Further developments include

• Gerard Clement, Dmitri Gal’tsov, Cedric Leygnac, Black branes on the linear dilaton background, Phys. Rev. D71 (2005) 084014 (arXiv:hep-th/0412321)

• D. Gal’tsov, S. Klevtsov, D. Orlov, G. Clement, More on general $p$-brane solutions, Int.J.Mod.Phys.A21:3575-3604, 2006 (arXiv:hep-th/0508070)

• Michael Duff, Near-horizon brane scan revived, Nucl. Phys. B810:193-209, 2009 (arXiv:0804.3675)

• Jay Armas, Joan Camps, Troels Harmark, Niels A. Obers, The Young Modulus of Black Strings and the Fine Structure of Blackfolds (arXiv:1110.4835)

Last revised on May 18, 2019 at 14:28:03. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.