Thermal transitions of metastable M-branes

Abstract

We use blackfold methods to analyse the properties of putative supergravity solutions in M-theory that describe the backreaction of polarised anti-M2 branes (namely, M5 branes wrapping three-cycles with negative M2-brane charge) in the Cvetic-Gibbons-Lu-Pope background of eleven-dimensional supergravity. At zero temperature we recover the metastable state of Klebanov and Pufu directly in supergravity. At finite temperature we uncover a previously unknown pattern of mergers between fat or thin M5-brane states with the thermalised version of the metastable state. At sufficiently small values of the anti-brane charge a single fat-metastable merger follows the same pattern recently discovered for polarised anti-D3-branes in the Klebanov-Strassler solution in type IIB supergravity. We provide quantitative evidence that this merger is driven by properties of the horizon geometry. For larger values of the anti-brane charge the wrapped M5brane solutions exhibit different patterns of finite-temperature transitions that have no known counterpart in the anti-D3 system in Klebanov-Strassler.

Anti-brane singularities as red herrings

“…An extra important virtue of the blackfold approach is that it allows to study the dynamics in presence of blackening factors. The results of [60,61] imply, amongst others, that anti-brane meta-stable states survive only a finite amount of temperature before getting destabilised, as expected on general grounds. We suspect that similarly the blackfold approach applied to D6-branes will lead to identi- Figure 4: The upper left picture shows the deviation from zero of the algebraic equation.…”

“…This approach is perfectly suited for understanding the dynamics of branes in the regimes we are looking at, since by construction it applies to the backreacting supergravity regime. Rather strikingly it was shown for D3-branes in [60] and for M2-branes in [61] that the blackfold approach gives the identical critical points (and potential) as computed by the classical, yet strongly coupled, probe actions. An extra important virtue of the blackfold approach is that it allows to study the dynamics in presence of blackening factors.…”

“…The interesting patterns of meta-stable states with thermalised probes observed in[60,61] so far have not been understood in the AdS/CFT context.…”

Classical de Sitter solutions in three dimensions without tachyons?

“…Not only due to possible strong coupling effects but also the classical backreaction of the anti-branes (see [69] for some pioneering work) could be a worry and potentially enhance the instabilities [70]. However non-trivial evidence in favor of the probe action results came from the complementary blackfold treatments carried out in [71][72][73] as well as from arguments pointing to the absence of dangerous singularities due to backreaction [68,[74][75][76]. It is however quite likely that the actual bounds are a bit more strict than the probe results.…”

Comments on the stability of the KPV state

“…given in [10] and [16], we shall not repeat it here. Nevertheless, let us briefly present the fundamental of the blackfold argument for the existence of metastable antibranes.…”