1999/02/28 by S. A. Abel, J. L. F. Barbon, I. I. Kogan +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-th #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1126-6708/1999/04/015
published as JHEP9904:015,1999 · 50 pages, LaTeX, 4 eps figures. Added discussion of random walk picture. Corrected technical error in the treatment of ND strings (notice some formulas are rewritten). Conclusions unchanged
arxiv created 1999/03/08 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
We discuss the thermal properties of string gases propagating in various D-brane backgrounds in the weak-coupling limit, and at temperatures close to the Hagedorn temperature. We determine, in the canonical ensemble, whether the Hagedorn temperature is limiting or non-limiting. This depends on the dimensionality of the D-brane, and the size of the compact dimensions. We find that in many cases the non-limiting behaviour manifest in the canonical ensemble is modified to a limiting behaviour in the microcanonical ensemble and show that, when there are different systems in thermal contact, the energy flows into open strings on the `limiting' D-branes of largest dimensionality. Such energy densities may eventually exceed the D-brane intrinsic tension. We discuss possible implications of this for the survival of Dp-branes with large values of p in an early cosmological Hagedorn regime. We also discuss the general phase diagram of the interacting theory, as implied by the holographic and black-hole/string correspondence principles.