Relativistic D-brane Scattering is Extremely Inelastic

Liam McAllister, Indrajit Mitra
2005 Journal of High Energy Physics  
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
more » ... stic. 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.
doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2005/02/019 fatcat:giygu5fq3fgavlinplik6tgigq