2004/08/31 by Liam McAllister, Indrajit Mitra · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2005/02/019
published as JHEP0502:019,2005 · 30 pages; added references and a comment about velocity-dependent masses
arxiv created 2004/09/24 · openalex publication_date 2005/02/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
We study the effects of quantum production of open strings on the relativistic scattering of D-branes. We find strong corrections to the brane trajectory from copious production of highly-excited open strings, whose typical oscillator level is proportional to the square of the rapidity. In the corrected trajectory, the branes rapidly coincide and remain trapped in a configuration with enhanced symmetry. This is a purely stringy effect which makes relativistic brane collisions exceptionally inelastic. We trace this effect to velocity-dependent corrections to the open-string mass, which render open strings between relativistic D-branes surprisingly light. We observe that pair-creation of open strings could play an important role in cosmological scenarios in which branes approach each other at very high speeds.