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# D-branes in a plane wave from covariant open strings

## 1 Introduction

Several recent papers have investigated D-branes in an Hpp-wave (a homogeneous plane-wave solution of the type-IIB supergravity solution with a constant five-form flux). A classification of their embeddings and supersymmetries has been given by Skenderis and Taylor using a probe brane approach , while equivalent results have also been obtained by Bain et al. by deriving supergravity solutions of D-branes in Hpp-waves . In the present letter we would like to show that the analysis of boundary conditions for the covariant open string leads to the same classification. Apart from verifying the existing classification in an independent way, this also sheds light on some recent questions concerning the quantum analysis of these branes. In particular, we clarify the origin of dynamical and kinematical supersymmetries from the covariant point of view111Dynamical supersymmetries are those supersymmetries which commute with the Hamiltonian, while kinematical supersymmetries are those which do not.. We restrict ourselves throughout to so-called longitudinal branes, i.e. branes for which the $`x^+`$ and $`x^{}`$ directions are part of the world-volume.

The Hpp-wave admits three classes of longitudinal branes without world-volume fluxes. The first class consists of half-BPS branes, which have straight embeddings in Rosen coordinates (they “follow geodesics of point-particles”) and have world-volume dimensions $`p=3,5,7`$. The spectrum of these branes has been analysed by Dabholkar and Parvizi  using the quadratic Green-Schwarz action in the light-cone gauge as derived by Metsaev . The analysis of Bergman et al.  has shown these boundary conditions to be consistent with open/closed string duality. The second class of branes is obtained by moving these branes away from the origin, or formulated more precisely, by embedding them along straight coordinate lines in the Brinkman coordinate system. This breaks the dynamical supersymmetries, so that only the kinematical supersymmetries remain. They have been argued to be inconsistent with open/closed string duality . We will derive the corresponding open string boundary conditions for these two classes of D-branes directly from kappa symmetry requirements.

The third, and most interesting, class of branes consists of a single one, namely a D-string which preserves half of the dynamical and none of the kinematical supersymmetries. While it is at present not known whether the presence of *only* dynamical supersymmetries is enough for quantum consistency (the corresponding boundary state has not yet been constructed), there are several hints that suggest that this object should be taken seriously. Firstly, it has been found as a fully localised solution in supergravity  (in contrast, the seemingly inconsistent branes mentioned in the previous paragraph only exist as smeared supergravity solutions). Secondly, we will show that the D-string can be traced back to an unstable object in the $`\text{AdS}_5\times S^5`$ geometry, and argued to become stable when the Penrose limit is taken. An important consequence of the existence of the D-string is that by a construction as in , it would imply the existence of a consistent D-instanton in the Hpp-wave.222We thank Matthias Gaberdiel and Michael Green for discussions about this issue.

We will start in the next section with a derivation of the D-brane boundary conditions from open string kappa symmetry. After establishing which supersymmetries and kappa symmetries are preserved by the various branes listed above in the covariant set-up, we explicitly construct their realisation on the physical states in the light-cone gauge in section 3. We show that there is a one-to-one relation between the branes we find and those obtained with other techniques, and moreover argue that all of them, including the D-string, can be seen in the light-cone gauge. The AdS origin of the D-string and its spectrum (in the Hpp-wave) is discussed in the last section.

## 2 D-brane boundary conditions from kappa symmetry

### 2.1 Generalities

The Green-Schwarz action is invariant under local $`\kappa `$-symmetry, which ensures that half of the fermionic degrees of freedom can be gauged to zero such that the resulting spectrum has the expected supersymmetry. For closed strings, the constraint of $`\kappa `$-symmetry ensures that the background fields satisfy their equations of motion. For open strings, $`\kappa `$-symmetry transformations result in boundary terms, which do not vanish without further constraints on the world-volume fields at the boundary. For a Minkowski background, these boundary terms have been examined by Lambert and West  and were shown to vanish when the standard boundary conditions for half-BPS branes are imposed (a similar type of analysis for membranes in eleven dimensions has been given by Ezawa et al.  and de Wit et al. ). In the present section we will extend the analysis to cover open Green-Schwarz strings in an Hpp-wave background.

Most of this calculation is rather technical, so we present here only the variations of the action and the resulting boundary conditions. At up to fourth order in the fermions, these boundary terms arise from variation of (54) and (55), labeled as $`S_{WZ}^1`$ and $`S_{WZ}^2`$ respectively. Full details can be found in the appendix.

### 2.2 Branes “at the origin”

Let us first discuss branes at the origin of the coordinate system.333Since the geometry is homogeneous, the coordinate origin is equivalent to any other point in the space; branes sitting at the origin can of course be located at any arbitrary other location, but this is manifest only in Rosen coordinates. For simplicity we will keep referring to these branes as “branes at the origin” when we really mean “branes which are flat in Rosen coordinates”. The terms in the kappa variation of the action (see equation (54) in the appendix) that survive in the flat space limit have appeared in the literature before ; they are given by

$`\delta _\kappa S_{WZ}^1{\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}[i(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\delta _\kappa \theta _1`$ $`\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\delta _\kappa \theta _2)\mathrm{d}X^\mu e_\mu ^r`$ (1)
$`+(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\delta _\kappa \theta _1\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^r\mathrm{d}\theta _1\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\delta _\kappa \theta _2\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^r\mathrm{d}\theta _2)],`$
Here we used kappa symmetry to express the variations of the bosons in terms of the variations of the fermions using (57). The terms above vanish by imposing the usual half-BPS boundary conditions,

$$\theta _1=P\theta _2,\overline{\theta }_1=\overline{\theta }_2P()^{\frac{(p1)(p2)}{2}+p}$$
(2)
with

$$P=\mathrm{\Gamma }^{+1\mathrm{}(p1)},P^2=()^{\frac{(p1)(p2)}{2}}.$$
(3)
Since the background five-form breaks the SO(8) symmetry to SO(4)$`\times `$SO(4), we will label these gluing matrices $`P`$ by two numbers $`n`$ and $`m`$, denoting the number of gamma matrices with indices in the first and second four transverse coordinates. The operators $`P^{(n,m)}`$ satisfy the relations

$$P^{(n,m)}I=IP^{(n,m)}()^n,P^{(n,m)}\mathrm{\Gamma }^r=\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{\Gamma }^rP^{(n,m)}()^{p+1}\hfill & \text{when }rD\text{,}\hfill \\ \mathrm{\Gamma }^rP^{(n,m)}()^p\hfill & \text{when }rN\text{,}\hfill \end{array}$$
(4)
(where $`N=\{+,,1,\mathrm{},p1\}`$ and $`D=\{p,\mathrm{},d2\}`$ and the operator $`I`$ is defined in (51)). One can then derive that

$$(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\delta _\kappa \theta _1)=\{\begin{array}{cc}(\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\delta _\kappa \theta _2)\hfill & \text{when }rD\text{,}\hfill \\ +(\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\delta _\kappa \theta _2)\hfill & \text{when }rN\text{.}\hfill \end{array}$$
(5)
These relations clearly make (1) vanish.

The new terms with respect to flat space arise from the five-form coupling in the Wess-Zumino term. We find that they lead to the boundary terms

$`\delta _\kappa S_{WZ}^1|_{\theta ^2}`$ $`2\mu {\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}[\begin{array}{cc}& \left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\delta _\kappa \theta _1+\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\delta _\kappa \theta _2\right)\hfill \\ & \times (\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^{[r}I\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{s]}\theta _2+\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^{[r}I\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{s]}\theta _1)]\mathrm{d}X^\nu e_{\nu s},\hfill \end{array}`$ (6)
$`\delta _\kappa S_{WZ}^1|_{\theta ^4}`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mu {\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}[\left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\delta _\kappa \theta _1\right)\left(\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^rI\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^s\theta _1\right)+(12)]\mathrm{d}X^\nu e_{\nu s}.`$
Note that these terms do *not* cancel against each other using only the half-BPS conditions (2) and the flip formula (5). Some of the terms that arise by varying $`S_{WZ}^2`$ in (55) are of a similar type, but they do not come with the right coefficient to cancel against the variation of $`S_{WZ}^1`$. Therefore, we need to cancel all of these contributions separately by imposing appropriate additional boundary conditions. Besides the relation (5) we now also need the new flip relation

$$(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^{[r}I\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{s]}\theta _2)=\{\begin{array}{cc}()^{\frac{(p1)(p2)}{2}+n+1}(\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^{[r}I\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{s]}\theta _1)\hfill & \text{when }rD\text{}sN\text{,}\hfill \\ ()^{\frac{(p1)(p2)}{2}+n}(\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^{[r}I\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{s]}\theta _1)\hfill & \text{when }rN\text{}sN\text{.}\hfill \end{array}$$
(7)
The variations in (6) are then seen to cancel (separately for each line) when

$$\frac{1}{2}(p1)(p2)+n=\text{odd}.$$
(8)
This condition also makes the boundary terms arising from $`\delta _\kappa S_{WZ}^2`$ vanish. We see that, unlike in Minkowski space, kappa symmetry is preserved in the Hpp-wave only for particular orientations of the D-branes in the wave (given by $`n`$ and $`p=m+n+1`$). Equation (8) holds true for the $`(2,0)`$, $`(3,1)`$ and $`(4,2)`$ embeddings, which are the half-BPS branes with $`p=3,5`$ and $`7`$ respectively. These results are in agreement with the analysis of probe branes  and the light-cone open string analysis of . In contrast, these boundary terms do not vanish for the $`(0,0)`$ embedding, which is the D-string.

For this $`(0,0)`$ embedding, the first line in (6) vanishes without further conditions because both $`r`$ and $`s`$ have to be Neumann directions, i.e. either plus or minus directions. However, canceling the second line leads to one of the constraints

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\theta _{1,2}|_\mathrm{\Sigma }=0\text{or}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\theta _{1,2}|_\mathrm{\Sigma }=0.$$
(9)
The latter leads, as expected and as we will see below, to no further problems when going to the light-cone gauge. The former condition is a bit special, as it shows that the $`(0,0)`$ D-string can be described in an alternative way. This condition seems to be sufficient to make all boundary terms at higher orders in theta vanish as well (see the appendix). It is, however, incompatible with the standard light-cone gauge.

With the above conditions, one can verify that the boundary terms arising from $`S_{WZ}^2`$ vanish as well; we will not discuss these in detail here.

### 2.3 Branes “outside the origin”

Let us now discuss the spin-connection dependent terms in the variation of the action. In contrast to the terms discussed above, these terms depend on the location of the end-point of the string in the target space. As we will see they automatically vanish for all D-branes sitting at the origin of the coordinate system. However, for branes outside the origin (and with flat embedding in Brinkman coordinates), their cancellation leads to additional boundary conditions. We find the following boundary terms:

$`\delta _\kappa S_{WZ}^1|_{\theta ^2}`$ $`{\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}[\begin{array}{cc}& \left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^n\delta _\kappa \theta _1+\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^n\delta _\kappa \theta _2\right)\hfill \\ & \times (\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_{[n}{}_{}{}^{rs}\omega _{m]rs}^{}\theta _1\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_{[n}{}_{}{}^{rs}\omega _{m]rs}^{}\theta _2)]\mathrm{d}X^\mu e_\mu ^m,\hfill \end{array}`$ (10)
$`\delta _\kappa S_{WZ}^1|_{\theta ^4}`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}{\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}[(\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^n\delta _\kappa \theta _2)(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_n{}_{}{}^{rs}\omega _{mrs}^{}\theta _1)(12)]\mathrm{d}X^\mu e_\mu {}_{}{}^{m}.`$
For the first line, we only have to consider the case where the $`m`$ or $`n`$ index on the gamma matrix in the second factor is not $`+`$ or $``$ (a lower minus sign on the gamma matrix is excluded because $`\omega _{++i}`$ is the only non-vanishing component of the spin connection, see (64); a lower plus sign on the gamma matrix would mean that both $`n`$ and $`m`$ are plus, and anti-symmetrisation then sets everything to zero). Using the exchange property (5), the boundary terms then reduce to

$`\delta _\kappa S_{WZ}^1`$ $`\mu {\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}\left[\left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\delta _\kappa \theta _1\right)\mathrm{d}X^n\left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^n\delta _\kappa \theta _1\right)\mathrm{d}X^+\right]\left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_n{}_{}{}^{+s^{}}\theta _{1}^{}\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_n{}_{}{}^{+s^{}}\theta _{2}^{}\right)_s^{}S`$ (11)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}[\left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^n\delta _\kappa \theta _1\right)\left(\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_n{}_{}{}^{+s^{}}\theta _{2}^{}\right)(12)]\mathrm{d}X^+_s^{}S,`$
where prime on the index $`s`$ indicates that it no longer takes the values $`+`$ or $``$. We now need the exchange property

$$(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_{mn}\theta _1)=\{\begin{array}{cc}+(\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_{mn}\theta _2)\hfill & \text{when }(m,n)(D,D)\text{ or }(N,N)\text{,}\hfill \\ (\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_{mn}\theta _2)\hfill & \text{when }(m,n)(N,D)\text{ or }(D,N)\text{.}\hfill \end{array}$$
(12)
This can be used to show that the above boundary terms (11) vanish only when the derivative on $`S`$ is in a Neumann direction. When the derivative is in the Dirichlet direction, the above boundary terms are non-zero outside the origin. In this case we need to impose

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\theta _{1,2}|_\mathrm{\Sigma }=0$$
(13)
in order to make the boundary terms vanish. As in the previous section, these conditions also make the boundary terms arising from $`S_{WZ}^2`$ vanish. We will see the implications of these conditions for the remaining supersymmetry on physical states in the next section.

## 3 Kinematical and dynamical supersymmetries

### 3.1 Symmetries, constraints and gauge fixing

Having derived D-brane boundary conditions for the open string variables, we now want to analyse their consequences in terms of the remaining supersymmetries on physical states. In order to make contact with results obtained using probe branes or supergravity solutions, we first need to understand the relation between the supersymmetry parameters appearing in the transformation rules of the *closed* string action and those appearing in the supergravity transformations. After that, we need to investigate the *open* string and determine which subset of these symmetries preserves the boundary conditions. Finally, we fix the kappa gauge freedom and obtain the action of the global symmetries on the physical states of the open string with D-brane boundary conditions.

Let us start by discussing the global supersymmetry invariance of the covariant action, i.e. before fixing a $`\kappa `$-symmetry gauge (see also ). In general the action is *by construction* invariant under the transformations444These transformation rules are only correct to lowest order in theta. We are suppressing higher-order theta contributions here as they later become irrelevant anyway when we go to the light-cone gauge.

$$\delta \theta _{1,2}=ϵ_{1,2},\delta X^\mu =i\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu ϵ_1+i\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu ϵ_2,ϵ=ϵ_1+iϵ_2,$$
(14)
for an *arbitrary* (not necessarily constant) target space spinor $`ϵ`$ evaluated at the world-volume, together with a transformation of all the background fields using the supergravity transformation rules with parameter $`ϵ`$. This is simply a reflection of the fact that superspace diffeomorphisms are equivalent to component supersymmetry transformations, and does not really constitute a non-trivial symmetry. From this observation it follows, however, that for the special situation in which $`ϵ`$ is a Killing spinor (evaluated at the world-sheet) and the background is bosonic, the string action is invariant under

$$\delta \theta _{1,2}=ϵ_{1,2}^{\text{Killing}},\delta X^\mu =i\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu ϵ_1^{\text{Killing}}+i\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu ϵ_2^{\text{Killing}}$$
(15)
by itself. This follows because the transformations of the background fields become trivial in this case. In other words, the action is invariant under *global* supersymmetries generated as shifts, with parameters which are identical to the target-space Killing spinors. We will call these supersymmetries *shift symmetries*. We will in general suppress the label “Killing” on the associated $`ϵ`$ parameters. Note that the shift parameter $`ϵ`$ has a *fixed*, but generically *non-constant* dependence on the string world-sheet coordinates.

Not all of the shift symmetries survive in the open string, as some of them may be incompatible with the boundary conditions on the $`\theta _{1,2}`$ fields. The remaining global supersymmetries are easily seen when acting on physical fields (i.e. in the light-cone gauge, in which the kappa symmetry is eliminated). Let us recall how to go to the semi-light-cone gauge given by the condition $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\theta _{1,2}=0`$.555It is rather simple to show, as we will do below, that this gauge is compatible with the boundary conditions. Note, however, that the D-string can be obtained with an alternative set of boundary conditions, namely $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\theta _{1,2}|_\mathrm{\Sigma }=0`$; see (9). These would pose problems for the standard semi-light-cone gauge. For this we need to be more specific about the form of kappa transformations. These act on fermions according to

$$\delta _\kappa \theta _{1,2}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\mathrm{\Pi }_j^r\kappa _{1,2}^j,$$
(16)
where $`\mathrm{\Pi }_i{}_{}{}^{r}=_iX^ME_M^r`$. The two kappa parameters are self-dual and anti self-dual respectively,

$$\kappa _1^\tau =\kappa _1^\sigma ,\kappa _2^\tau =\kappa _2^\sigma .$$
(17)
One then easily obtains the kappa symmetry transformation necessary to bring the action into the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\theta _{1,2}`$ gauge:

$$\kappa _{1,2}^\tau =\frac{1}{2}\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Pi }_\tau ^+\mathrm{\Pi }_\sigma ^+}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\theta _{1,2}.$$
(18)
In the presence of a D-brane boundary condition

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\theta _{1,2}|_\mathrm{\Sigma }=0,$$
(19)
the story is slightly changed, as this constraint fully removes kappa symmetry at the boundary. However, even with this “reduced” kappa symmetry (with $`\kappa 0|_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$) we can still globally go to semi-light-cone gauge, since all fermions on the world sheet are also constrained by (19). In contrast, the light cone gauge cannot be reached for the first D-string condition in (9), as it would lead to discontinuous fermionic fields on the world-volume.

Once in the $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\theta _{1,2}=0`$ gauge, half of the shift supersymmetries ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}ϵ`$) are such that they keep the system in this gauge. The other half of the shift symmetries ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+ϵ`$) moves the system out of the light-cone gauge. However, it is always possible to perform a compensating kappa transformation, such that the gauge condition is restored. The remaining global symmetries are then given by

$`\delta \theta _{1,2}`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}ϵ_{1,2}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+ϵ_{1,2}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Pi }_\tau ^+\mathrm{\Pi }_\sigma ^+}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_r(\mathrm{\Pi }_\tau ^r\mathrm{\Pi }_\sigma ^r)\mathrm{\Gamma }^+ϵ_{1,2}`$ (20)
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}ϵ_{1,2}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Pi }_\tau ^+\mathrm{\Pi }_\sigma ^+}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_r^{}(\mathrm{\Pi }_\tau ^r^{}\mathrm{\Pi }_\sigma ^r^{})\mathrm{\Gamma }^+ϵ_{1,2},`$
where primes indicate summation over transverse directions only.

All of these expressions are rather ugly unless a further bosonic light-cone choice is made. When $`X^+=\tau `$ the above results simplify because $`\mathrm{\Pi }_\tau ^+\mathrm{\Pi }_\sigma ^+=1`$. The remaining covariant momenta $`\mathrm{\Pi }_i^r^{}`$ also simplify to $`_iX^r^{}`$ in the Hpp-wave background.

### 3.2 Supersymmetries in the light-cone gauge

Let us now apply the general logic of the previous subsection to the D-brane boundary conditions found before. The Killing spinors of the Hpp-wave were constructed by Blau et al.  and are in our conventions given by

$$\begin{array}{c}ϵ=\left(1+\underset{m=1,2,3,4}{}\frac{i}{2}\mu X^m\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }_mI+\underset{m=5,6,7,8}{}\frac{i}{2}\mu X^m\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }_mJ\right)\hfill \\ \hfill \times (\mathrm{cos}^2(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)\mathbb{𝟙}\mathrm{sin}(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)^2IJi\mathrm{sin}(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)\mathrm{cos}(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)(I+J))(\lambda +i\eta ).\end{array}$$
(21)
The spinors $`\lambda `$ and $`\eta `$ are constant. It is convenient to decompose this expression using

$$\lambda =\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\lambda +\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\lambda :=\lambda ^{(+)}+\lambda ^{()},$$
(22)
and similarly for the $`\eta `$ spinor. As the spinors have positive chirality, one deduces

$$IJ\left(\lambda ^{(\pm )}+i\eta ^{(\pm )}\right)=\pm \left(\lambda ^{(\pm )}+i\eta ^{(\pm )}\right),I\left(\lambda ^{(\pm )}+i\eta ^{(\pm )}\right)=\pm J\left(\lambda ^{(\pm )}+i\eta ^{(\pm )}\right).$$
(23)
We then obtain a decomposition of the Killing spinor into $`X^+`$ dependent and $`X^+`$ independent parts,

$`ϵ=\left[\mathrm{cos}^2(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)\mathrm{sin}^2(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)2i\mathrm{sin}(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)\mathrm{cos}(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)I\right]\left(\lambda ^{(+)}+i\eta ^{(+)}\right)`$ (24)
$`+\left[1+{\displaystyle \frac{\mu }{2}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{m=1,2,3,4}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{m=5,6,7,8}{}}\right)iX^m\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }_mI\right]\left(\lambda ^{()}+i\eta ^{()}\right)`$ $`.`$
These two lines correspond to the “kinematical” and “dynamical” part of the Killing spinor. Note, however, that this decomposition does *not* correspond to the decomposition $`ϵ=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}ϵ+\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+ϵ`$.

Using expression (20) we can now immediately write down the *global* supersymmetry invariances of the *closed* Green-Schwarz action in the Hpp-wave666Similar global transformation rules where given for the $`d=11`$ supermembrane by Sugiyama and Yoshida ; their derivation, however, does not start from the covariant action.:

$`\delta \theta _1`$ $`=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\left[\left(\mathrm{cos}^2(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)\mathrm{sin}^2(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)\right)\lambda ^{(+)}+2\mathrm{sin}(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)\mathrm{cos}(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)I\eta ^{(+)}\right]`$
$`\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Gamma }_r^{}(_\tau _\sigma )X^r^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\lambda ^{()}`$
$`\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\left[\mu \left({\displaystyle \underset{m=1,2,3,4}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{m=5,6,7,8}{}}\right)X^m\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }_mI\eta ^{()}\right],`$ (25)
$`\delta \theta _2`$ $`=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\left[\left(\mathrm{cos}^2(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)\mathrm{sin}^2(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)\right)\eta ^{(+)}2\mathrm{sin}(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)\mathrm{cos}(\frac{1}{2}\mu X^+)I\lambda ^{(+)}\right]`$
$`\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Gamma }_r^{}(_\tau +_\sigma )X^r^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\eta ^{()}`$
$`+\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\left[\mu \left({\displaystyle \underset{m=1,2,3,4}{}}{\displaystyle \underset{m=5,6,7,8}{}}\right)X^m\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }_mI\lambda ^{()}\right].`$ (26)
These are accompanied by a transformation of the transverse bosons, which get a contribution both from the shift symmetry as well as the compensating kappa transformation,

$$\delta X^r^{}=2i\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^r^{}\lambda ^{()}+2i\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^r^{}\eta ^{()}.$$
(27)
Instead of relying on the covariant arguments given so far, one can of course also verify directly that the action of a *closed* string

$$\begin{array}{c}S=\mathrm{d}^2\sigma [\frac{1}{2}_+X^r^{}_{}X_r^{}\frac{1}{2}\mu ^2X^r^{}X_r^{}\hfill \\ \hfill +i\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}_+\theta _1+i\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}_{}\theta _22i\mu \overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^{}\mathrm{\Pi }\theta _2],\end{array}$$
(28)
(with $`_\pm =_\tau \pm _\sigma `$) is indeed invariant under the symmetries given above.

As we discussed before, not all of these symmetries of the closed string survive for an *open* string, as the boundary conditions can be such that some of the global supersymmetries (3.2) and (3.2) do not survive. Let us, as an example, discuss the D-string boundary conditions. By imposing $`\delta \theta _1=\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\delta \theta _2`$ at the boundary, we find from (3.2) and (3.2) that

$$\lambda =\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\eta ,\lambda ^{(+)}=\eta ^{(+)}=0,$$
(29)
which together imply $`\lambda ^{()}=\eta ^{()}`$. When this relation holds, one indeed verifies that the action (28) for an open string is invariant. This condition is precisely what has been obtained from probe branes as well. In the next subsection we will make this correspondence more precise for general branes.

### 3.3 Comparison with probe brane and supergravity results

A nice consequence of the above analysis is that it makes it very simple to show that the global supersymmetries preserved by the open string with various D-brane boundary conditions indeed match the probe brane results of Skenderis and Taylor . The condition for kappa symmetry of the probe brane embedding is written as

$$ϵ=\gamma ϵ,\text{with}\gamma =\gamma ^{+mn}()^{\frac{p+1}{2}}(i),$$
(30)
where $`\gamma `$ is the kappa symmetry projector and $`m`$ and $`n`$ symbolically denote the number of indices in the first and second four transverse directions. This condition can be rewritten as

$$ϵ_1+iϵ_2=\mathrm{\Gamma }^{+mn}\left(ϵ_2()^{\frac{p+1}{2}}iϵ_1\right)ϵ_1=\mathrm{\Gamma }^{+mn}ϵ_2,$$
(31)
(the real and imaginary part of the equation are equivalent because of the relation $`(\mathrm{\Gamma }^{+mn})^2=()^{\frac{1}{2}p(p+1)1}`$ which for odd $`p`$ equals $`()^{\frac{p+1}{2}}`$). Requiring a match between linearly independent terms of this equation is then identical to the conditions obtained from $`\delta \theta _1=\mathrm{\Gamma }^{+mn}\delta \theta _2`$, thereby completing the proof of the equivalence between probe brane and open string results.

A match is also found by comparing with the supergravity solutions of Bain et al. . Here the comparison is necessarily less systematic, as the Killing spinors of the brane-in-wave backgrounds are not simply obtained from the Killing spinors of the Hpp-wave. The various branes have to be addressed case-by-case. For e.g. the D-string solution, we see from equation (3.18) of  that it requires $`\gamma ^+\gamma ^{}\widehat{ϵ}=0`$, which in our notation corresponds to (29).

## 4 The “quarter BPS” D-string

### 4.1 $`\text{AdS}_5\times S^5`$ origin

Boundary conditions for open strings which are consistent at tree level do not necessarily have to be consistent for higher genus open string surfaces. This was demonstrated by Bergman et al.  for D$`p`$-branes with $`p>1`$ located outside the origin of the Brinkman coordinates. Tree level boundary conditions used at one-loop in the open string genus expansion seem to be incompatible with the open/closed string duality. Having established consistent tree level open string boundary conditions for the quarter-supersymmetric D-string, we therefore now have to investigate whether this solution makes sense in the full theory.777Calling the D-string “quarter-BPS” is perhaps not quite correct, as BPS conditions can only be derived from supercharges that square to the Hamiltonian. Since the kinematical supercharges do not have this property, the BPS fraction strictly speaking only refers to the number of unbroken dynamical supersymmetries. In this sense the D-string could be called “half-BPS”, but to avoid confusion we will keep referring to all branes by the total number of unbroken supersymmetries.

One way of attacking this question is to follow an analysis similar to . Another, less direct argument is to try to trace back the D-string to the AdS and D3-brane geometries. One expects that all branes which are consistent in the D3-brane geometry should also be consistent in the AdS geometry, and these should in turn lead to consistent D-branes in the Hpp-wave. Hence, if one can prove that the particular D-string in the D3-brane or AdS background which leads to the D-string in the Hpp-wave geometry (after the sequence of near-horizon and Penrose limits) is consistent in the initial space, then the D-string should also be a consistent solution in the Hpp-wave.

Although the D-string in the AdS space can not be quantised and analysed directly, the fact that there should be a dual gauge description might be useful in proving its existence. Unfortunately the dual gauge description of the string is at this moment not yet fully under control . However, we would like to mention several properties of this D-string.

It is obvious, from the way the Penrose limit is taken, that the D-string which wraps the big circle of the $`S^5`$ through which the limiting null geodesic passes leads to the D-string at the origin of the Hpp-wave space. This D-string is unstable against small perturbations, and will collapse to a point (i.e. a minimal $`S^1`$ on $`S^5`$) as we will now discuss.

Since the open string/CFT description of this D-string is lacking, we can use the effective action approach to study its (in)stability by looking at the spectrum of small quadratic fluctuations around the static position. Therefore, we start with the $`\text{AdS}_5\times S^5`$ space written in global coordinates

$$\mathrm{d}s^2=R^2(\mathrm{d}t^2\mathrm{cosh}^2\rho +\mathrm{d}\rho ^2+\mathrm{sinh}^2\rho \mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Omega }_3^2+\mathrm{d}\psi ^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta +\mathrm{d}\theta ^2+\mathrm{sin}^2\theta \mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Omega }_{3}^{}{}_{}{}^{2})$$
(32)
and consider the D-string wrapping the equator of $`S^5`$. Choosing the static gauge $`t=\tau `$ and $`\psi =\sigma `$ with all the other coordinates set to zero, it is easy to see that this embedding is a solution of the Dirac-Born-Infeld equations of motion

$$_i\left(\sqrt{\mathrm{det}\widehat{g}}\widehat{g}^{ij}_iX^\nu g_{\mu \nu }\right)\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{\mathrm{det}\widehat{g}}\widehat{g}^{ij}_iX^\nu _jX^\rho _\mu g_{\nu \rho }=0,$$
(33)
where $`\widehat{g}`$ is the induced metric on the D-string world-sheet.

To investigate the issue of stability, it is enough to look at the fluctuations in the angular direction $`\theta `$. We will also consider the fluctuations in the AdS space direction $`\rho `$ to show that they do not contain unstable modes. We introduce arbitrary functions $`\delta \theta `$ and $`\delta \rho `$ of the world-volume coordinates and expand the DBI action to quadratic order in these fluctuations

$$S_{\text{quadr.}}\mathrm{d}^2\sigma \left(\delta \dot{\rho }^2+\delta \rho _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}+\delta \rho ^2\delta \dot{\theta }^2+\delta \theta _{}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\delta \theta ^2\right).$$
(34)
From this expression we conclude that the zero mode of $`\delta \theta `$ is indeed tachyonic, signaling the instability of the solution under small perturbations in this direction.

Actually, it is possible to describe in detail the behaviour of this perturbed D-string by searching for a time dependent solution $`\theta (t)`$ of the equations of motion (33). For $`\mu =\psi `$, this equation is satisfied as in the unperturbed case while for $`\mu =t`$, it leads to

$$\frac{d}{dt}\left(\frac{\mathrm{cos}\theta }{\sqrt{1\dot{\theta }^2}}\right)=0$$
(35)
and it is easy to check that the equation (33) for $`\mu =\theta `$ is a consequence of (35). Integrating one time (35) gives the first order differential equation

$$\frac{\mathrm{d}\theta }{\sqrt{1c^2\mathrm{cos}^2\theta }}=\mathrm{d}t,$$
(36)
where $`c`$ is a constant which is determined in terms of the initial position $`\theta _0`$ and velocity $`v_0\dot{\theta }_0`$ : $`c=\sqrt{1v_0^2}/\mathrm{cos}\theta _0`$. The equation (36) can be integrated by using a function known as the incomplete elliptic integral in the mathematical literature and denoted $`F(x|c)`$ :

$$F(\theta |c)F(\theta _0|c)=t.$$
(37)
which defines implicitly the evolution of the D-string on the 5-sphere. When $`c=1`$, which encompasses the case of the static D-string sitting at the equator, we can give a more explicit expression

$$\theta (t)=\mathrm{arcsin}\left(\frac{2ae^t}{1+a^2e^{2t}}\right)\mathrm{with}a\sqrt{\frac{1\mathrm{cos}\theta _0}{1+\mathrm{cos}\theta _0}}.$$
(38)
From this relation, one can write down the induced metric on the world-volume of the D-string

$`\mathrm{d}s_{\mathrm{D1}}^2`$ $`=R^2(\mathrm{d}t^2+\mathrm{d}\theta ^2+\mathrm{cos}^2\theta \mathrm{d}\psi ^2)=R^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{1a^2e^{2t}}{1+a^2e^{2t}}}\right)^2(\mathrm{d}t^2+\mathrm{d}\psi ^2)`$ (39)
and compute, as a function of its initial position, the time it takes for the D-string to collapse to one of the poles of $`S^5`$ : $`t_s=\mathrm{log}a=\mathrm{arctanh}\left(\mathrm{cos}\theta _0\right)`$. As expected, this time goes to infinity when the D-string is initially infinitesimally close to the equator ($`\theta _00`$).

Let us now consider the Penrose limit of this shrinking D-string. The time $`t`$ and active angular coordinates $`\psi `$ and $`\theta `$ are rescaled as

$`t=x^++{\displaystyle \frac{x^{}}{R^2}},\psi =x^+{\displaystyle \frac{x^{}}{R^2}}\mathrm{and}\theta ={\displaystyle \frac{y}{R}}\mathrm{for}R\mathrm{}.`$ (40)
Therefore, we observe that, in order to survive under the Penrose limit, the D-string defined by the equation (38) must sit initially at an angle $`\theta _0`$ such that $`a1/R`$. In other words, it must be at a distance $`\theta _0`$ of order $`1/R`$ from the equator. This analysis can be repeated in the general case $`c1`$ and one can see that the D-strings which survive must again be infinitesimally close (in initial position and velocity) to the static configuration; in more quantitative words, one should also have $`c11/R^2`$. The Penrose limit of such D-strings correspond to stable solutions of the DBI action in the plane wave background. In particular, the tachyonic mode along the direction $`\theta `$ is washed out under this process. This can be seen by evaluating the action on the Penrose limit of the solution; in contrast to the action of the shrinking D-string in the AdS background, the action is now constant. Hence, through the Penrose limit, the *unstable* (static or moving) D-string on $`S^5`$ gets mapped into a *susy* and hence stable (static or moving) configuration in the Hpp-wave geometry.

Finally, let us conclude this section by observing that the D-string in the AdS space which is wrapping the equator of the 5-sphere originates from an unstable circular D-string in the geometry of the D3-branes, which lies in the two-plane that intersects the D3-brane over a point, times the time. This is obvious from the isometries which are preserved by these two configurations. Note, however, that while the circular string in the D3-brane geometry is always a *non-static* configuration, this is not true any longer in the near horizon geometry, which admits a static configuration.

### 4.2 World-volume spectrum

In order to find the world-volume spectrum we have to determine the mode expansion of the bosonic and fermionic fields on the open string. The equations of motion obtained from the light-cone action (28) are

$`_+_{}X^r+\mu ^2X^r`$ $`=0,`$ (41)
$`_+\theta ^1\mu I\theta ^2`$ $`=0,`$
$`_{}\theta ^2+\mu I\theta ^1`$ $`=0.`$
The mode expansions for the closed string can be found in  and these have been used to construct the mode expansions subject to half-supersymmetric boundary conditions, see . For boundary conditions that remove all of the kinematical supersymmetries the story is slightly different, as we will now show. We will for simplicity only consider strings starting and ending on a D-string, i.e. with boundary conditions

$$\theta ^1=\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\theta ^2|_{\sigma =0,\pi }.$$
(42)
The $`\tau `$-independent parts of the fermionic mode expansion are easily found. Using the ansatz

$`\theta ^1`$ $`=(1+\mathrm{\Omega }I)\theta ^+e^{\mu \sigma }+(1\mathrm{\Omega }I)\theta ^{}e^{\mu \sigma }+{\displaystyle \underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}}c_n\left(\theta _n^1e^{i\omega _n\tau in\sigma }+\stackrel{~}{\theta }_n^1e^{i\omega _n\tau +in\sigma }\right),`$ (43)
$`\theta ^2`$ $`=(\mathrm{\Omega }+I)\theta ^+e^{\mu \sigma }+(\mathrm{\Omega }I)\theta ^{}e^{\mu \sigma }+{\displaystyle \underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{+\mathrm{}}{}}}c_n\left(\theta _n^2e^{i\omega _n\tau in\sigma }+\stackrel{~}{\theta }_n^2e^{i\omega _n\tau +in\sigma }\right),`$
(where $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\mathrm{\Gamma }^+`$) we find that, for the D-string boundary conditions, the Fourier coefficients $`\theta _n^1`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\theta }_n^1`$, $`\theta _n^2`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{\theta }_n^2`$ can all be expressed in terms of a single mode $`\theta _n`$ as

$`\theta _n^1`$ $`=\left[n\omega _n+i\mu \mathrm{\Omega }I\right]\theta _n,`$ (44)
$`\stackrel{~}{\theta }_n^1`$ $`=\left[n+\omega _ni\mu \mathrm{\Omega }I\right]\theta _n,`$
$`\theta _n^2`$ $`=\left[n+\omega _n+i\mu \mathrm{\Omega }I\right]\mathrm{\Omega }\theta _n,`$
$`\stackrel{~}{\theta }_n^2`$ $`=\left[n\omega _ni\mu \mathrm{\Omega }I\right]\mathrm{\Omega }\theta _n,`$
where $`\omega _n=\mathrm{sgn}(n)\sqrt{\mu ^2+n^2}`$ and, for convenience, we have introduced the factors $`c_n=1/\sqrt{1+(\omega _nn)^2/\mu ^2}`$. Note in particular that for $`n=0`$ the above implies $`\theta _0^1+\stackrel{~}{\theta }_0^1=0`$ and $`\theta _0^2+\stackrel{~}{\theta }_0^2=0`$ which eliminates the zero modes from the expansions (43) (consistent with the fact that these D-branes do not have any kinematical supersymmetries). Finally, reality of the coordinates implies that $`\theta _n=(\theta _n)^{}`$.

The bosonic mode expansions have been given in ,

$`X^r={\displaystyle \frac{x_0^r\mathrm{sinh}\mu (\pi \sigma )+x_1^r\mathrm{sinh}\mu \sigma }{\mathrm{sinh}\mu \pi }}+i{\displaystyle \underset{n0}{}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2|\omega _n|}}}a_n^re^{i\omega _n\tau }\mathrm{sin}n\sigma `$ (45)
for an open string stretched between two D-strings located at the transverse positions $`x_0`$ and $`x_1`$.

Therefore, we see that the open strings attached to the D-string do not have zero modes in the Dirichlet direction (defined, strictly speaking, as the $`\sigma `$-independent part of their Fourier expansion). However, this property does not mean that the D-string lacks the zero modes which allow it to move in the transverse directions. The latter correspond to the fields $`x_{0/1}^r`$ appearing in the expansion (45).

Using the standard Poisson/Dirac brackets between the bosonic/fermionic coordinates, one can perform the canonical quantization of the open string ending on a D-string; for the quarter-BPS D-string, the commutation relations between the oscillators are

$`m,n0,[a_m^r,a_n^s]=\mathrm{sgn}(n)\delta _{m+n,0}\delta ^{rs}\mathrm{and}\{\theta _m^{1a},\theta _n^{1b}\}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(\mathrm{\Gamma }^+)^{ab}\delta _{m+n,0}`$ (46)
where we have arbitrarily chosen the Fourier modes $`\theta _n^1`$ as the independent fermionic variables. These commutation relations can in principle be used as a starting point to construct the open string spectrum but we will refrain from addressing that problem here.

## 5 Discussion and open issues

In the present letter we have shown how to obtain boundary conditions for the covariant open Green-Schwarz string which correspond to D-branes in an Hpp-wave. We have shown that this analysis reproduces all D-branes known from previous probe brane and supergravity computations. The advantage of our approach is that, since we start from a covariant system, we are able to produce directly the global supersymmetry invariances of the action after light-cone gauge fixing.

We have also discussed the properties of the curious quarter-supersymmetric D-string. This object preserves dynamical supersymmetries (only) and may therefore be consistent with open/closed string duality. It is interesting to observe that similar states appear in other backgrounds as well, for instance the Nappi-Witten background with two planes, and it would be interesting to study their quantum consistency as well. In view of the original motivation to study Hpp-waves, it is also important to understand the corresponding states in the dual gauge theory. Progress on this issue will be reported elsewhere.

As a side result, we have mentioned that there seem to be two different ways to obtain the D-string from boundary conditions on the open string (see equation (9)). It is at present not clear to us whether these boundary conditions correspond to the same physical object.

Finally, the present analysis and evidence in favour of the presence of a D-string is likely to be an argument that supports the existence of a D-instanton in the Hpp-wave background. The present literature on the gauge dual of D-instanton induced vertices in the Hpp-wave background is not sufficient yet to rule out such an object, and further progress along the lines of  would be welcome.

## Acknowledgements

We thank Nadav Drukker, Matthias Gaberdiel, Shiraz Minwalla, Robert Myers, Marika Taylor and especially Michael Green for discussions. The work in this paper was partially sponsored by EU contracts HPRN-CT-2000-00122 and HPRN-CT-2000-00148.

## Appendix A Appendix

### A.1 Details of the Green-Schwarz string in the Hpp-wave

This appendix contains the details of the covariant action of the Green-Schwarz string in the Hpp-wave. This mostly follows Metsaev  though or notation is slightly different. From an analysis of the kappa symmetry transformations in superspace, one can see that the only boundary terms arise from the variation of the Wess-Zumino part of the action (see footnote 8 below). This part of the action is given by

$$S_{WZ}=2i_0^1dt\mathrm{d}^2\sigma ϵ^{ij}E_{it}^r\left(\mathrm{\Theta }^T𝒞\mathrm{\Gamma }_rE_{jt}\right)$$
(47)
where the super-vielbeine are expanded as

$`E`$ $`={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}}{}}𝒟\mathrm{\Theta },`$ (48)
$`E^r`$ $`=e^r2i\overline{\mathrm{\Theta }}\mathrm{\Gamma }^r{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cosh}1}{^2}}𝒟\mathrm{\Theta }.`$
The matrix $`^2`$ is given by

$$^2=\left(\begin{array}{cc}A& B\\ B^{}& A^{}\end{array}\right),$$
(49)
where ($`i,j`$ run over $`1,2,3,4`$ only)

$`A^a_b`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{5}{}}}(L_i\theta )^a(\overline{\theta }R_i)_b`$ (50)
$`=(I\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^r\theta )^a(\overline{\theta }\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu )_b(\mathrm{\Gamma }^{+i}\theta )^a(\overline{\theta }\mathrm{\Gamma }^iI)_b+\frac{1}{2}(\mathrm{\Gamma }^{ij}\theta )^a(\overline{\theta }\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{ij}I)_b`$
$`+\{1,2,3,4\}\{5,6,7,8\},`$
$`B^a_b`$ $`={\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{5}{}}}(L_i\theta )^a(\theta R_i)_b`$
$`=(I\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^r\theta )^a(\theta \mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu )_b+(\mathrm{\Gamma }^{+i}\theta )^a(\theta \mathrm{\Gamma }^iI)_b\frac{1}{2}(\mathrm{\Gamma }^{ij}\theta )^a(\theta \mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{ij}I)_b`$
$`+\{1,2,3,4\}\{5,6,7,8\}.`$
The matrix $`I`$ appearing above (denoted $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ in ) and the associated $`J`$ are given by

$$I=\mathrm{\Gamma }^{1234},J=\mathrm{\Gamma }^{5678}.$$
(51)
The two real fermions are grouped according to

$$\mathrm{\Theta }=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\begin{array}{c}\theta _1+i\theta _2\\ \theta _1i\theta _2\end{array}\right),\overline{\mathrm{\Theta }}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\begin{array}{c}\theta _1i\theta _2\\ \theta _1+i\theta _2\end{array}\right)^T𝒞,$$
(52)
Inserting these expressions, keeping all the terms which lead to variations up to and including fourth order in $`\mathrm{\Theta }`$ and taking care of the $`t`$-integral, one obtains

$`S_{WZ}=i{\displaystyle }\mathrm{d}^2\sigma ϵ^{ij}[e_i^r\left(\mathrm{\Theta }^T𝒞\mathrm{\Gamma }_r𝒟_j\mathrm{\Theta }\right)\frac{1}{2}i(\overline{\mathrm{\Theta }}`$ $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^r𝒟_i\mathrm{\Theta }\left)\right(\mathrm{\Theta }^T𝒞\mathrm{\Gamma }_r𝒟_j\mathrm{\Theta })`$ (53)
$`+\frac{1}{12}e_i^r\left(\mathrm{\Theta }^T𝒞\mathrm{\Gamma }_r^2𝒟_j\mathrm{\Theta }\right)],`$
Note that, due to the $`t`$-integral which leads to a different coefficient for every power of $`\theta `$, the first line above does not factorise as $`E_i{}_{}{}^{r}(\mathrm{})`$. To this order in the fermions, one thus finds two parts: one which is obtained from the flat-space action by replacing the normal derivative with a covariant derivative, and one which arises from a $`^2`$ term in the expansion of $`E^a`$. These are, in terms of $`\theta _{1,2}`$, given by respectively

$$S_{WZ}^1=\mathrm{d}^2\sigma [iϵ^{ij}e_i{}_{}{}^{r}(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\widehat{D}_j\theta _1\overline{\theta }^2\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\widehat{D}_j\theta ^2)+ϵ^{ij}\left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^r\widehat{D}_i\theta _1\right)\left(\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\widehat{D}_j\theta _2\right)],$$
(54)
and

$$S_{WZ}^2=\frac{1}{12}\mathrm{d}^2\sigma \begin{array}{cc}& ϵ^{ij}[(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^rI\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^s\theta _2+\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^rI\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }^s\theta _1)(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_s_i\theta _1+\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_s_i\theta _2)\hfill \\ & +\left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^r\mathrm{\Gamma }^{+m}\theta _1\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^r\mathrm{\Gamma }^{+m}\theta _2\right)\left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_mI_i\theta _2\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_mI_i\theta _1\right)\hfill \\ & \frac{1}{2}\left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^r\mathrm{\Gamma }^{mn}\theta _1\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^r\mathrm{\Gamma }^{mn}\theta _2\right)\left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{mn}I_i\theta _2\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{mn}I_i\theta _1\right)\hfill \\ & +\{1,2,3,4\}\{5,6,7,8\}]_jX^\mu e_{\mu r}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(55)
Here $`m,n`$ run over $`1\mathrm{}4`$ only. We do not have to consider here the terms in $`\widehat{D}_j\theta `$ that are proportional to $`_iX^\mu `$, as these will produce variations of order $`\theta ^6`$. In these expressions the hatted covariant derivatives are given by

$$\widehat{D}_i\theta _{1,2}=_i\theta _{1,2}+\frac{1}{4}\omega _{\mu rs}\mathrm{\Gamma }^{rs}\theta _{1,2}_iX^\mu \pm \frac{1}{2}e_\mu {}_{}{}^{r}I\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\theta _{2,1}_iX^\mu .$$
(56)
There are additional four-fermi terms in the action, but these will not contribute to the boundary terms of the kappa variation at second and fourth order in the fermions.

The variation $`\delta _\kappa X^\mu `$ can be expressed in terms of $`\delta _\kappa \theta _{1,2}`$ through the defining relation in superspace,

$$\delta _\kappa X^ME_M{}_{}{}^{r}=0\delta _\kappa X^\mu =i\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu \delta _\kappa \theta _1i\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu \delta _\kappa \theta _2+𝒪(\theta ^4).$$
(57)
Upon variation of the action all bulk terms vanish because the background is on-shell, and the remaining boundary terms are given by 888 From (57) one can now show that the only boundary terms come from the Wess-Zumino part of the action: in the kinetic terms, all variations of the fields inside a derivative are of the form
$$_i(\delta _\kappa X^M)E_M{}_{}{}^{r}=\delta _\kappa X^M_iE_M{}_{}{}^{r},$$
(58)  there is therefore no need for partial integration, and no boundary terms are generated..

$`\delta _\kappa S_{WZ}^1={\displaystyle _\mathrm{\Sigma }}`$ $`[i\delta _\kappa X^\mu (\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu \widehat{D}\theta _1\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu \widehat{D}\theta _2)`$ (59)
$`i\mathrm{d}X^\mu (\begin{array}{cc}& \overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu \delta _\kappa \theta _1+\frac{1}{4}\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu \mathrm{\Gamma }^{rs}\omega _{\nu rs}\theta _1\delta _\kappa X^\nu +\frac{1}{2}\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu I\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }_\nu \theta _2\delta _\kappa X^\nu \hfill \\ \hfill & \overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu \delta _\kappa \theta _2\frac{1}{4}\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu \mathrm{\Gamma }^{rs}\omega _{\nu rs}\theta _2\delta _\kappa X^\nu +\frac{1}{2}\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_\mu I\mathrm{\Gamma }^+\mathrm{\Gamma }_\nu \theta _1\delta _\kappa X^\nu )\hfill \end{array}`$
$`\left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }^r\delta _\kappa \theta _1\right)\left(\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\widehat{D}\theta _2\right)+\left(\overline{\theta }_2\mathrm{\Gamma }^r\delta _\kappa \theta _2\right)\left(\overline{\theta }_1\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\widehat{D}\theta _1\right)].`$
### A.2 Kappa symmetry boundary terms at higher orders in theta

With the boundary conditions (2) for generic branes and (9) for the D-string, we have found that

$$(\mathrm{\Theta }^T𝒞\mathrm{\Gamma }_r𝒟_j\mathrm{\Theta })=0\text{if }rN.$$
(60)
This is very useful for higher order calculations: it means that in the variation of the first term in (53) we do not have to consider variation of the $`e_i^r`$ factor at all. However, there are still other variations.

Just as in (55), the higher order terms in $`^2`$ will reduce to products of $`\theta `$-bilinears, each factor of which is a sum or difference of two terms obtained by interchange of $`\theta _1`$ and $`\theta _2`$. We need an efficient way to figure out the relative signs between these two terms. One finds the following general expression:

$`\mathrm{\Theta }^T𝒞\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\left(^2\right)^n𝒟\mathrm{\Theta }`$ $`=\begin{array}{cc}\hfill {\displaystyle \underset{R_i,L_i}{}}& \left[(\theta \mathrm{\Gamma }_rL_n\theta )_n(\overline{\theta }\mathrm{\Gamma }_rL_n\overline{\theta })\right]\hfill \\ & \times \left[(\theta R_nL_{n1}\overline{\theta })\pm _n_{n1}(\overline{\theta }R_nL_{n1}\theta )\right]\times \mathrm{}\hfill \\ & \times \left[(\theta R_1D\overline{\theta })\pm _1(\overline{\theta }R_1D\theta )\right],\hfill \end{array}`$ (61)
$`\overline{\mathrm{\Theta }}\mathrm{\Gamma }_r\left(^2\right)^n𝒟\mathrm{\Theta }`$ $`=\begin{array}{cc}\hfill {\displaystyle \underset{R_i,L_i}{}}& \left[(\overline{\theta }\mathrm{\Gamma }_rL_n\theta )_n(\theta \mathrm{\Gamma }_rL_n\overline{\theta })\right]\hfill \\ & \times \left[(\theta R_nL_{n1}\overline{\theta })\pm _n_{n1}(\overline{\theta }R_nL_{n1}\theta )\right]\times \mathrm{}\hfill \\ & \times \left[(\theta R_1D\overline{\theta })\pm _1(\overline{\theta }R_1D\theta )\right].\hfill \end{array}`$
The $`L_i`$ and $`R_i`$ are defined in (50). The signs $`\pm _n`$ are the relative signs between the $`n`$-th term in $`A`$ and the $`n`$-th term in $`B`$, i.e. $`\pm _n=\{+,,,,\}`$. The expression (55) is a special case of the general formula above.

Using these expressions, one can easily write down the expression for the WZ part of the action, (47). An analysis of these seems to suggest that even at higher order in $`\theta `$, the resulting boundary terms in the variation under kappa symmetry all vanish when the D-brane boundary conditions derived in the main text are satisfied. This is in particular true for the D-string with either one of the boundary conditions in (9).

### A.3 Conventions and notation

We follow the conventions of Metsaev . The $`X^\pm `$ coordinates are defined as $`X^\pm =(X^0\pm X^9)/\sqrt{2}`$. The metric for the Hpp-wave is

$$\mathrm{d}s^2=2\mathrm{d}X^+\mathrm{d}X^{}S(\mathrm{d}X^+)^2+(\mathrm{d}X^i)^2.$$
(62)
The vielbeine for the PP-wave are

$$e^+=\mathrm{d}X^+,e^{}=\mathrm{d}X^{}\frac{S}{2}\mathrm{d}X^+,e^r=\delta _\mu {}_{}{}^{r}\mathrm{d}X^\mu ,$$
(63)
with $`\eta _+=1`$, from which one computes the only non-zero component of the spin connection,

$$\omega _{+r}=\frac{1}{2}_rS\mathrm{d}X^+.$$
(64)
For spinors $`\theta `$, which are positive chirality Majorana-Weyl, we use a 32-component notation everywhere. The chirality projector and Dirac bar are

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }:=\mathrm{\Gamma }^{0\mathrm{}9},\overline{\theta }=\theta ^T𝒞,$$
(65)
where $`𝒞`$ is the charge conjugation matrix satisfying $`𝒞^T=𝒞`$ and $`𝒞^1(\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu )^T𝒞=\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu `$ in ten dimensions. Our index conventions are summarised in the following table:

|  | coordinate basis | tangent basis |
| --- | --- | --- |
| superspace 10+32 dim. | $`M,N,P,\mathrm{}`$ | $`A,B,C,\mathrm{}`$ |
| bosonic 10 dim. | $`\mu ,\nu ,\rho ,\mathrm{}`$ | $`r,s,t,\mathrm{}`$ |
| fermionic 32 dim. | $`\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma ,\mathrm{}`$ | $`a,b,c,\mathrm{}`$ |
| bosonic 2 dim. | $`i,j,k`$ |  |


format: text

text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Recently string theory in time-dependent backgrounds has attracted much interest (recent papers on this subject include -). This is because in order to apply the string theory in cosmology we would need to know the string theory in time-dependent backgrounds. As an example one can consider orbifold quotients of Minkowski space-time which non-trivially act on both space and time . We note, however, that in general orbifolds of space-time leads to singularities corresponding to the closed light-like loops. Nevertheless one can resolve these singularities by making use of the null-brane backgrounds  which is obtained form the space-time orbifold together with an extra shift. In the next section we review this geometry.

This null-brane background preserves one-half of the original flat space supersymmetry. It has also a null Killing vector which makes it possible to use light-cone quantization. The stability of this geometry has also been studied in .

Open string sector in this background has recently been considered . This, for example, can be done by using D-branes for probing the geometry. D3-brane probing this background has been studied in  where the authors argued that the D3-brane worldvolume decouples from the bulk gravity leading to a noncommutative gauge theory with time-dependent noncommutativity parameter. This is the aim of this article to generalize this consideration for other D-branes as well as NS5-brane. In the NS5-brane case the situation reminisces the ODp-theory, namely we will find NS5-brane solution in the presence of RR $`n`$-form for $`n=0,\mathrm{},4`$ in the time-dependent background. We shall also consider M5-brane in an 11-dimensional time-dependent background which can be obtained in the same way as the one in string theory. Namely we could start from an 11-dimensional null-brane geometry of M-theory. The theory on the corresponding M5-brane can be thought as a new deformation of (0,2) theory. This system is very similar to OM-theory .

The organization of the paper is as follows. In section 2 we will review the null-brane background and then we shall probe this background by Dp-brane for $`2<p6`$. We will argue that the worldvolume theory decouples from gravity for $`p5`$ and therefore this background would provide a gravity description for noncommutative field theory with time-dependent noncommutativity parameter. In section 3 we will consider the near horizon limit of the background obtained in section 2. We shall briefly study the phase structure of the theory as well. In section 4 type II NS5-branes in the null-brane geometry are considered which lead to new deformation of the little string theory. In section 5 M5-brane probing 11-dimensional null-brane geometry is studied. Section 6 is devoted to the comments and conclusions.

## 2 Supergravity solution

In this section we shall briefly review the structure of null-brane geometry. Then in order to study the properties of this background in string theory we will probe the geometry by D-branes. This background could change the worldvolume theory of the brane leading, probably, to a new field theory.

We start with a 10-dimensional flat spacetime $`R^{1,9}`$ with metric

$$ds^2=2dx^+dx^{}+dx^2+dz^2+d\stackrel{}{Y}_6^2,$$
(1)
where $`d\stackrel{}{Y}_6^2`$ is the flat 6-dimensional space. Now consider the orbifold obtained by identifying

$$\left(\begin{array}{c}x^+\\ x\\ x^{}\\ z\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}x^+\\ x+2\pi nx^+\\ x^{}+2\pi nx+2(\pi n)^2x^+\\ z+2\pi n\beta \end{array}\right),nZ,$$
(2)
while leaves $`d\stackrel{}{Y}_6^2`$ unchanged and $`\beta `$ is a constant. The above orbifold background is called the null-brane .

It is useful to introduce a new set of coordinates as following

$$x^+=y^+,x=y^+y,x^{}=y^{}+\frac{1}{2}y^+y^2,$$
(3)
and other coordinates remain the same as before. In this coordinates the orbifold metric reads

$$ds^2=2dy^+dy^{}+(y^+)^2dy^2+dz^2+d\stackrel{}{Y}_6^2,$$
(4)
and the orbifold identification becomes

$$\left(\begin{array}{c}y^+\\ y\\ y^{}\\ z\end{array}\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}y^+\\ y+2\pi n\\ y^{}\\ z+2\pi n\beta \end{array}\right).$$
(5)
Now we want to probe this background with a system of $`N`$ Dp-branes for $`p>2`$ with worldvolume directions $`(y^+,y^{},y,z,x_1\mathrm{}x_{p3})`$ where $`x_i`$’s are $`(p3)`$-dimensional subspace of $`\stackrel{}{Y}_6`$. The procedure is very similar to that in  (see also ) to construct the supergravity dual of the noncommutative dipole theory. To do this we start with the flat Dp-brane in the $`y`$ coordinates

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`f^{1/2}\left(2dy^+dy^{}+(y^+)^2dy^2+dz^2+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{p3}{}}}dx_i^2\right)+f^{1/2}(dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_{8p}^2),`$ (6)
$`e^{2\varphi }`$ $`=`$ $`f^{(3p)/2},dC_{+yz1\mathrm{}(p3)}_rf^1,f=1+{\displaystyle \frac{R^{7p}}{r^{7p}}},`$ (8)
where $`R^{7p}=c_pg_sNl_s^{7p}`$ with $`c_p=2^{5p}\pi ^{\frac{5p}{2}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{7p}{2})`$. Here $`z`$ is compactified on a circle of radius $`\beta `$. T-dualizing along $`z`$ coordinate leads to the D(p-1)-brane smeared over one direction

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`f^{1/2}\left(2dy^+dy^{}+(y^+)^2dy^2+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{p3}{}}}dx_i^2\right)+f^{1/2}(dz^2+dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_{8p}^2),`$ (9)
$`e^{2\varphi }`$ $`=`$ $`f^{(4p)/2},dC_{+y1\mathrm{}(p3)}_rf^1,f=1+{\displaystyle \frac{R^{7p}}{r^{7p}}}.`$ (11)
We now twist $`y`$ coordinate so that under identification of $`z`$ one gets

$$zz+2\pi \beta ,yy+2\pi .$$
(12)
One can define a new coordinate in which $`yy\frac{z}{\beta }`$ such that the identification becomes trivial

$$zz+2\pi \beta ,yy.$$
(13)
In this new coordinates the T-dualized metric (11) reads

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`f^{1/2}\left(2dy^+dy^{}+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{p3}{}}}dx_i^2\right)+f^{1/2}(dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_{8p}^2)`$ (14)
$`+`$ $`f^{1/2}(y^+)^2dy^2+f^{1/2}(1+{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2}{\beta ^2f}})dz^2+2f^{1/2}{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2}{\beta }}dydz,`$ (16)
T-dualizing back along $`z`$ direction and using the T-duality rules  we will find a supergravity solution of Dp-brane probing the orbifold background (4) as following333The supersymmetry of branes in the null-brane geometry in string theory and M-theory was also studied in . In fact the solution we have found here is dual to one of the possible reductions of the delocalised M2-brane discussed in section 3.2 of paper . This solution is the special case of the reduction labelled (A) in that section where the $`\theta _i=0`$. We would like to thank J. Figueroa-O’Farrill for bringing our attention to this point.

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`f^{1/2}\left(2dy^+dy^{}+h((y^+)^2dy^2+dz^2)+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{p3}{}}}dx_i^2\right)+f^{1/2}(dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_{8p}^2),`$ (17)
$`e^{2\varphi }`$ $`=`$ $`hf^{(3p)/2},h^1=1+{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2}{\beta ^2f}},f=1+{\displaystyle \frac{R^{7p}}{r^{7p}}},`$ (19)
$`B_{yz}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2}{\beta }}hf^1,dC_{+yz1\mathrm{}(p3)}_rf^1,`$ (21)
In general given a supergravity solution of a system of branes, it is not clear whether the solution would give a well-defined description of some field theory. In fact, we must check and see whether there is a well-defined field theory on the brane worldvolume which decouples from the bulk gravity. To see this, one might calculate scattering amplitude for gravitons  which can be done by computing the gravitons absorption cross section. If there is a limit (decoupling limit) where the gravitons absorption cross section vanishes, we have a field theory which decouples from the gravity. Using the same method as in  one can see that the background (21) give a well-defined theory in a decoupling limit for $`p<6`$.

More precisely, let us perturb the metric of the background (21) by

$$g_{\mu \nu }=\overline{g}_{\mu \nu }+h_{\mu \nu }\mu ,\nu =0,\mathrm{},9,$$
(22)
where by $`\overline{g}_{\mu \nu }`$ we denote the background metric (21) and $`h_{\mu \nu }`$ is the perturbation. We consider s-wave gravitons as following

$$h_{\mu \nu }=ϵ_{\mu \nu }\mathrm{\Psi }(r,y^+,y^{}),\mu =0,\mathrm{},p.$$
(23)
Using the linearized equations of motion of type II supergravity we find following equation for transverse gravitons

$$_\mu \left(\sqrt{g}e^{2\varphi }g^{\mu \nu }_\nu \mathrm{\Psi }\right)=0,$$
(24)
which leads to

$$_r(r^{(8p)}_r\mathrm{\Psi })2fr^{8p}_+_{}\mathrm{\Psi }\frac{r^{8p}}{y^+}f_{}\mathrm{\Psi }=0.$$
(25)
As an ansatz we take $`\mathrm{\Psi }(r,y^+,y^{})=h(r)Y(y^+,y^{})`$. Thus we find two differential equations

$$_r^2h+\frac{8p}{r}_rh+\omega ^2fh=0,\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}_+_{}Y+\frac{1}{y^+}_{}Y\omega ^2Y=0,$$
(26)
The differential equation for $`Y`$ can be easily solved

$$Y=\frac{1}{\sqrt{y^+}}e^{\frac{i\omega }{\sqrt{2}}(y^++y^{})}.$$
(27)
This time-dependence form of the solution reflects the fact that at large $`r`$ the space is not flat. From the radial equation one can read the potential by writing it in the form of a Schrödinger-like equation. Doing so we get the following Schrödinger-like equation

$$_\rho ^2\phi (\rho )+V_p(\rho )\phi (\rho )=0,$$
(28)
where

$$V_p(\rho )=\left(1+\frac{c_pNg_s(\omega l_s)^{7p}}{\rho ^{7p}}\right)+\frac{(8p)(6p)}{4\rho ^2}$$
(29)
with $`\rho =\omega r`$.

This potential is the same as the one found in  for the ordinary D-branes as well as branes in the presence of B field. Therefore we conclude that we have a decoupled theory living on the worldvolume of Dp-brane for $`p5`$.

## 3 Decoupling limit

In this section we study the near horizon limit of the supergravity solution (21). Having a decoupling limit, this could provide a gravity description of the theory along the AdS/CFT correspondence .

The decoupling limit of the background (21) is defined as a limit in which $`l_s0`$ while keeping the following quantities fixed

$$u=\frac{r}{l_s^2},b=\frac{\beta }{l_s^2},\stackrel{~}{g}=g_sl_s^{p3}.$$
(30)
In this limit the supergravity solution (21) reads

$`l_s^2ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{u^{(7p)/2}}{\sqrt{g_{YM}^2N}}}\left(2dy^+dy^{}+h((y^+)^2dy^2+dz^2)+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{p3}{}}}dx_i^2\right)`$ (31)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{g_{YM}^2N}}{u^{(7p)/2}}}(du^2+u^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_{8p}^2),`$ (33)
$`e^{2\varphi }`$ $`=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{g}^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{g_{YM}^2N}{u^{7p}}}\right)^{\frac{3p}{2}}h,B_{yz}={\displaystyle \frac{l_s^2}{b}}{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2u^{7p}}{g_{YM}^2N}}h,`$ (35)
where $`h^1=1+\frac{(y^+)^2u^{7p}}{g_{YM}^2b^2N}`$ and $`g_{YM}^2=c_p\stackrel{~}{g}`$.

Following  string theory on these backgrounds provides the gravity description of noncommutative gauge theories with nonconstant noncommutativity parameter in various dimensions.

The effective dimensionless coupling constant in the corresponding noncommutative field theory can be defined as following

$$g_{\mathrm{eff}}^2g_{\mathrm{YM}}^2Nu^{p3}.$$
(36)
The scalar curvature of the metric in eq. (35) has the behavior

$$l_s^2\frac{1}{g_{\mathrm{eff}}}.$$
(37)
Thus the perturbative calculation in noncommutative field theory can be trusted when $`g_{\mathrm{eff}}1`$, while when $`g_{\mathrm{eff}}1`$ the supergravity description is valid. We note also that the expression for dilaton in (35) can be recast to

$$e^\varphi =\frac{1}{N}g_{\mathrm{eff}}^{(7p)/4}h^{1/2}.$$
(38)
Keeping $`g_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ and $`h`$ fixed we see from (38) that $`e^\varphi 1/N`$. Therefore the string loop expansion corresponds to $`1/N`$ expansion of noncommutative gauge theory.

Since the scalar curvature is time-independent, as far as the effective gauge coupling is concerned, the situation is the same as ordinary brane solution. But since the dilaton is time-dependent this will change the phase structure of the theory. In particular at given fixed energy the effective string coupling will change with time. There is a critical time $`y_c^+=g_{YM}b\sqrt{N}/u^{(7p)/2}`$ where for $`y^+>y_c^+`$ the noncommutative effects become important and the effective string coupling becomes

$$e^{2\varphi }\frac{b(g_{YM}^2N)^{(9p)/2}}{N}\frac{u^{(p5)(7p)/2}}{(y^+)^2}.$$
(39)
Therefore the effective string coupling decreases in time, and thus under time evolution the gravity description becomes more applicable.

On the other hand at any given time the phase structure of the theory is the same as that in noncommutative field theory with constant noncommutativity parameter, namely those studied in  (see also ). The only difference is that the distinguished points where the description of the theory has to be changed is now time-dependent.

In the notation of  the dimensionless effective noncommutative parameter is given by

$$a^{\mathrm{eff}}=\left(\frac{y^+u^2}{bg_{\mathrm{eff}}}\right)^{\frac{2}{7p}}.$$
(40)
At large distances $`L\sqrt{y^+/bg_{\mathrm{eff}}}`$ the noncommutative effects are small and the effective description of the worldvolume theory is in terms of a commutative field theory. Note that this distance is time-dependent which means that under time evolution of the theory the distance where the noncommutative effects are negligible becomes very large.

Form the expression of the dimensionless effective noncommutative parameter (40) one can read the noncommutative parameter seen by the gauge theory. In fact we get

$$[y,z]\frac{y^+}{b},$$
(41)
which is in agreement with the field theory consideration .

## 4 NS5-brane in the presence of RR field

The worldvolume theory of NS5-branes in the presence of electric RR field decouples from bulk gravity leading to an interacting theory with light open Dp-brane. These theories are known as open Dp-brane theory or in short ODp-theory . The supergravity description of these theories have been studied in .

In this section we shall study time-dependent background of type II NS5-brane in the presence of RR field. To do this, we start from D5-brane solution presented in the previous section. By making use of S-duality one can find the type IIB NS 5-brane in the presence of RR 2-form 444Under S-duality we have $`\varphi \varphi `$ and $`ds^2e^\varphi ds^2`$ where $`ds^2`$ is the metric in string frame. Moreover NS B field gets change to the RR 2-form.. Then a series of T-dualities will generate other possible RR fields. In fact by this procedure one gets

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`h^{1/2}\left[2dy^+dy^{}+h((y^+)^2dy^2+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}dx_i^2)+{\displaystyle \underset{j=n+1}{\overset{3}{}}}dx_j^2+f(dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_3^2)\right],`$ (42)
$`e^{2\varphi }`$ $`=`$ $`fh^{(n3)/2},C_{y1\mathrm{}n}^{(n+1)}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{g_s}}{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2}{\beta }}hf^1,f=1+{\displaystyle \frac{Nl_s^2}{r^2}},`$ (44)
which is type II NS5-brane in the presence of RR $`(n+1)`$-form for $`n=0,1,2,3`$.

We note, however, that in the D5-brane solution (21) the metric is not symmetric under exchanging of $`yz`$.555Note that this is not the case for the noncummutative field theory with constant noncommutativity parameter. Therefore we have another choice of doing the series of T-dualities in which we have also make a T-duality along $`y`$ direction. Doing so we get another solution of type II NS5-brane in the presence of different possible RR fields as following

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`h^{1/2}\left[2dy^+dy^{}+{\displaystyle \frac{dy^2}{(y^+)^2}}+h{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}dx_i^2+{\displaystyle \underset{j=n+1}{\overset{3}{}}}dx_j^2+f(dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_3^2)\right],`$ (45)
$`e^{2\varphi }`$ $`=`$ $`fh^{(n4)/2},C_{1\mathrm{}n}^{(n)}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{g_s}}{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2}{\beta }}hf^1,f=1+{\displaystyle \frac{Nl_s^2}{r^2}},`$ (47)
which is the type II NS5-brane in the presence of RR $`n`$-form for $`n=0,1,2,3`$.

Having a supergravity solution one could proceed to consider the decoupling limit of the theory. The decoupling limit of the NS5-brane can be obtained from D5-brane using S-duality in which $`l_s^2g_sl_s^2`$ and $`g_sg_s^1`$. Thus the decoupling limit is given by a limit in which $`g_s0`$ while keeping the following quantities fixed666To make $`u`$ of dimension of energy, we have also added $`l_s`$ in the definition of $`u`$, similarly for $`b`$.

$$u=\frac{r}{g_sl_s^2},b=\frac{\beta }{g_sl_s^2},l_s=\mathrm{fixed},$$
(48)
which is very similar to the decoupling limit of the little string theory  (see also ). In this limit the supergravity solutions (44) and (47) read

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`h^{1/2}[2dy^+dy^{}+h((y^+)^2dy^2+{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}dx_i^2)+{\displaystyle \underset{j=n+1}{\overset{3}{}}}dx_j^2`$ (51)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{Nl_s^2}{u^2}}(du^2+u^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_3^2)],`$
$`e^{2\varphi }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{Nl_s^2}{u^2}}h^{(n3)/2},C_{y1\mathrm{}n}^{(n+1)}={\displaystyle \frac{l_s^2}{b}}{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2u^2}{N}}h,`$ (53)
for (44), and

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`h^{1/2}\left[2dy^+dy^{}+{\displaystyle \frac{dy^2}{(y^+)^2}}+h{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}}dx_i^2+{\displaystyle \underset{j=n+1}{\overset{3}{}}}dx_j^2+{\displaystyle \frac{Nl_s^2}{u^2}}(du^2+u^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_3^2)\right],`$ (54)
$`e^{2\varphi }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{Nl_s^2}{u^2}}h^{(n4)/2},C_{1\mathrm{}n}^{(n)}={\displaystyle \frac{l_s^2}{b}}{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2u^2}{N}}h,`$ (56)
for (47). Here $`h^1=1+(y^+)^2u^2/Nb^2`$.

The curvature of the above supergravity solutions reads

$$l_s^2\frac{1}{(1+\frac{(y^+)^2u^2}{b^2N})^{1/2}}$$
(57)
therefore for large $`u`$ the curvature is small and the supergravity solution provides a good description of the theory.

The same as previous section one can consider scalar field scattering of the NS5-brane. The corresponding wave equation for an ansatz of the form $`\mathrm{\Psi }(r,y^+,y^{})=\frac{\phi (r)}{\sqrt{y^+}}e^{\frac{i\omega }{\sqrt{2}}(y^++Y^{})}`$ leads to the following Schrödinger-like equation

$$_\rho ^2\phi (\rho )+V_p(\rho )\phi (\rho )=0,$$
(58)
where

$$V_p(\rho )=1+(\frac{3}{4}1)\frac{N\omega ^2l_s^2}{\rho ^2},$$
(59)
with $`\rho =\omega r`$. Following  we conclude that the theory has a mass gap of order $`m_{\mathrm{gap}}1/\sqrt{Nl_s^2}`$. This is exactly the same mass gap as the one in the little string theory, namely the presence of RR field has not changed the mass gap. Note that in the ODp-theory the mass gap will change because of the presence of RR field. In fact in this case the mass gap is given by noncommutative effective parameter which is given by the value of electric RR field . In this sense these theories are closer to the little string theory than ODp-theory.

## 5 M-theory 5-brane

The supergravity solution of M5-brane in the presence of nonzero $`C`$ 3-form along the worldvolume of the brane has been considered in . This worldvolume theory in the decoupling limit is a well-defined quantum theory with light open membrane, known as OM-theory . M5-brane solution in the presence of C field with two legs along the worldvolume directions has also been studied in  in the context of noncommutative “discpole” theory .

In this section we would like to study the M5-brane probing an 11-dimensional time-dependent orbifold background similar to (4). To find the supergravity solution, one can start from D4-brane solution and then lift it up to the 11-dimensional supergravity. By making use of the relation between 11-dimensional supergravity solution and its corresponding 10-dimensional dimensional solution

$$ds_{11}^2=e^{\frac{4\varphi }{3}}(dx_{11}+C_\mu dx^\mu )^2+e^{\frac{2\varphi }{3}}ds_{10}^2$$
(60)
one can lift up the supergravity solution of D4-brane in (21), to find

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`(hf)^{1/3}\left[2dy^+dy^{}+h((y^+)^2dy^2+dx_1^2+dx_2^2)+dx_3^2+f(dr^2+r^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_4^2)\right],`$ (61)
$`C_{y12}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2}{\beta }}hf^1,f=1+{\displaystyle \frac{\pi Nl_p^3}{r^3}},h^1=1+{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2}{\beta ^2}}f^1.`$ (62)
where $`l_p`$ is 11-dimensional Plank length. Of course we have another $`C`$ form representing the charge of $`N`$ M5-branes. We note also that under reduction to 10-dimensional solution along a transverse direction we will get the type IIA NS5-brane solution in the presence of RR 3-form as in (44).

The decoupling limit of the theory is defined by a limit in which $`l_p0`$ while keeping the following quantities fixed

$$u^2=\frac{r}{l_p^3},b^2=\frac{\beta }{l_p^3}.$$
(63)
In this limit the supergravity solution (62) reads

$`l_p^2ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{u^2}{(\pi N)^{1/3}}}h^{1/3}[2dy^+dy^{}+h((y^+)^2dy^2+dx_1^2+dx_2^2)+dx_3^2`$ (66)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\pi N}{u^4}}(4du^2+u^2d\mathrm{\Omega }_4^2)],`$
$`C_{y12}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{l_p^3}{b}}{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2u^6}{\pi N}}h,h^1=1+{\displaystyle \frac{(y^+)^2u^6}{\pi Nb^4}}.`$ (67)
The curvature of the above metric reads

$$l_p^2\frac{1}{N^{2/3}}\frac{1}{(1+\frac{(y^+)^2u^6}{\pi Nb^4})^{1/3}}.$$
(68)
Therefore we can trust the supergravity solution in the UV for a given time. On the other hand under time evolution the curvature decreases and thus the good description is given in terms of supergravity.

## 6 Conclusions

In this paper we have studied supergravity solution of various type II superstring branes in a time-dependent background. The background we have probed by branes is null-brane geometry which is obtained by space-time orbifold accompanied by a shift. The shift will resolve the singularities which could appear because of closed time-like loops.

We have seen that the worldvolume theory decouple from gravity for Dp-brane with $`p5`$. Following  these backgrounds could provide gravity description of noncommutative field theories with time-dependent noncommutativity parameter. These backgrounds preserve 8 supersymmetries out of 32 supersymmetries presented in the flat space. Indeed the time-dependent orbifold we have considered in this paper breaks one-half of the supersymmetry. Adding brane in the theory will break one-half more. Therefore the noncommutative field theories we have studied in this paper preserve only one half of the supersymmetry of the corresponding noncommutative field theories with constant noncommutativity parameter. In this sense the situation is very similar to the noncommutative dipole field theory where the maximal possible SUSY is 8 supercharges .

We have also considered type II NS5-branes in the null-brane background. In the decoupling limit we have found a series of six dimensional theories which are identified by an RR form. These theories can be thought as a new deformation of the little string theory. The structure of these theories reminisces the structure of ODp-theories , though, as we have seen, the mass gap of theory is given by string length while in ODp theory it is fixed by deformation parameter or the value of electric RR field at infinity.

We note also that using T-duality we have been able to find a new set of NS5-brane solutions in the presence of RR field (47). This could also give another deformation of the little string theory. Now starting from gravity solution (47) with $`n=2`$ one can use S-duality to find a new gravity solution of D5-brane in a time-dependent background which is different from one in (21). Now using T-duality we will get new Dp-brane solution in the time dependent background. It would be interesting to study this background as well.

Having a gravity description of a theory it is natural to compute the Wilson loop of corresponding field theory using its gravity description . It would therefore be interesting to compute the Wilson loop in the noncommutative gauge theory studied in this paper using its gravity dual (35).

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank M. M. Sheikh-Jabbari for comments and discussions.


text:
# Excited bands in odd-mass rare-earth nuclei

## I Introduction

The nuclear shell model May49  is the cornerstone in the microscopic study of nuclear properties. In the last two decades it has been possible to perform calculations for valence nucleons in the full $`sd`$ Bro88  and $`fp`$ Cau95  shells, providing a detailed description of energy levels, and electromagnetic and weak transitions. Nevertheless, a shell model description of heavy nuclei requires further assumptions that include a systematic and proper truncation of the model space Val91 .

In light deformed nuclei the dominance of quadrupole-quadrupole interaction led to the introduction of the SU(3) shell model Ell58 . However, the strong spin-orbit interaction renders the SU(3) truncation scheme useless in heavier nuclei, while at the same time pseudo-spin emerges as a good symmetry Hec69 , and with it the pseudo-SU(3) model Dra82 .

Pseudo-spin symmetry refers to the experimental fact that single-particle orbitals with $`j=l\frac{1}{2}`$ and $`j=(l2)+\frac{1}{2}`$ in the shell $`\eta `$ lie very close in energy, and can therefore be labeled as pseudo-spin doublets with quantum numbers $`\stackrel{~}{ȷ}=j`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\eta }=\eta 1`$, and $`\stackrel{~}{l}=l1`$. The origin of this symmetry has been traced back to the relativistic mean field equations Blo95 .

During the last decade the pseudo-SU(3) shell model has significantly evolved, becoming a powerful microscopic theory for the description of the low energy rotational bands in even-even heavy deformed nuclei, and of normal parity bands in heavy deformed odd-A nuclei. The first applications considered pseudo-SU(3) a dynamical symmetry, using only one irreducible representation (irrep) of SU(3) to describe the yrast band up to the backbending regime Dra82 . After many improvements in the rotor Hamiltonian, a technical breakthrough came with the development of a computer code able to calculate reduced matrix elements of physical operators between different SU(3) irreps Bah94 . From then on it was possible to use a realistic Hamiltonian which, besides the quadrupole-quadrupole interaction and rotor terms, includes the breaking symmetry single particle energies and pairing interactions.

In this way a fully microscopic description of low-energy bands in even-even and odd-A heavy deformed nuclei emerged. The model have been using as building blocks the pseudo-SU(3) proton and neutron states having pseudo-spin 0 and $`\frac{1}{2}`$, which describe the even- and odd-A systems, respectively. The many-particle states are built as linear combinations of pseudo-SU(3) coupled states with well-defined particle number and total angular momentum. Many rotational bands and B(E2) electromagnetic transition strengths have been described in the even-even rare earth isotopes 156,158,160Gd, 160,162,164Dy and 164,166,168Er Beu00 ; Pop00 ; Dra01  and in the odd-mass 159,161Tb, 159,163Dy, 159Eu, 161Tm, and 165,167Er nuclei Var00a ; Hir00 ; Var00b ; Var01 .

Widening the landscape of applications of the pseudo SU(3) model, in the present work proton and neutron states having pseudo spin 1 and $`\frac{3}{2}`$, for even and odd number of particles, respectively, are included in the Hilbert space. The final many-particle states in odd-mass nuclei have total spin $`\frac{1}{2}`$, $`\frac{3}{2}`$ or $`\frac{5}{2}`$. In this enriched space, six or seven normal parity low-lying rotational bands in 157Gd, 163Dy and 169Tm are successfully described. Many of them have important pseudo-spin 1 and $`\frac{3}{2}`$ components, evidencing their relevance in the present study. Intra and inter-band B(E2) transition strengths are also discussed. This article complements the research of the scissors mode, M1 transition strengths in the range between 2 and 4 MeV, performed in the same nuclei Var02 .

In Section II a brief description of the pseudo SU(3) classification scheme is presented. The schematic Hamiltonian and its parametrization is discussed in Section III. The results for low-lying rotational bands in 157Gd, 163Dy and 169Tm are presented in Section IV, where their wave functions are also discussed. The B(E2) intra- and inter-band transition strengths are presented in Section V. The summary and conclusions are given in Section VI

## II The Pseudo SU(3) Basis

The starting point in any application of the pseudo SU(3) model is the building of the many-body basis. The proton and neutron valence Nilsson single particle levels are filled from below for a fixed deformation, allowing the determination of the occupancies in normal and unique parity orbitals Var00b . As it has been the case for all pseudo SU(3) studies up to now, nucleons in abnormal parity orbital are frozen, being the dynamics described using only nucleons in normal parity states. This choice is further reflected through the use of effective charges to describe quadrupole electromagnetic transitions which are larger than those usually employed in shell-model calculations. While it has been shown that this is a reasonable and useful approach, it is nonetheless a strong assumption and the most important limitation of the present model. A more sophisticated treatment of the problem, with nucleons in intruder orbitals described in the same footing using SU(3) irreps is under development Var98 ; Var01d .

In Table 1 are presented the occupation numbers assigned to each nuclei.

The many-particle states of $`n_\alpha `$ active nucleons in a given normal parity shell $`\eta _\alpha `$, $`\alpha =\nu `$ or $`\pi `$, can be classified by the following chains of groups:

$`\{1^{n_\alpha ^N}\}\{\stackrel{~}{f}_\alpha \}\{f_\alpha \}\gamma _\alpha (\lambda _\alpha ,\mu _\alpha )\stackrel{~}{S}_\alpha \kappa _\alpha `$
$`U(\mathrm{\Omega }_\alpha ^N)U(\mathrm{\Omega }_\alpha ^N/2)\times U(2)SU(3)\times SU(2)`$
$`\stackrel{~}{L}_\alpha J_\alpha ^N`$
$`SO(3)\times SU(2)SU_J(2),`$ (1)
where above each group the quantum numbers that characterize its irreps are given, and $`\gamma _\alpha `$ and $`\kappa _\alpha `$ are multiplicity labels of the indicated reductions.

Any state $`|J_iM`$, where $`J`$ is the total angular momentum, $`M`$ its projection and $`i`$ an integer index which enumerates the states with the same $`J,M`$ starting from the one with the lowest energy, is built as a linear combination

$$|J_iM=\underset{\beta }{}C_\beta ^{J_i}|\beta JM$$
(2)
of the strong coupled proton-neutron states

$`|\beta JM`$
$`|\{\stackrel{~}{f}_\pi \}(\lambda _\pi \mu _\pi )\stackrel{~}{S}_\pi ,\{\stackrel{~}{f}_\nu \}(\lambda _\nu \mu _\nu )\stackrel{~}{S}_\nu ;\rho (\lambda \mu )\kappa L,\stackrel{~}{S}JM=`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{M_LM_S}{}}(LM_L,\stackrel{~}{S}M_S|JM){\displaystyle \underset{M_{S\pi }M_{S\nu }}{}}(\stackrel{~}{S}_\pi M_{S\pi },\stackrel{~}{S}_\nu M_{S\nu }|\stackrel{~}{S}M_S)`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{\begin{array}{c}k_\pi L_\pi M_\pi \\ \kappa _\nu L_\nu M_\nu \end{array}}{}}(\lambda _\pi \mu _\pi )\kappa _\pi L_\pi M_\pi ;(\lambda _\nu \mu _\nu )\kappa _\nu L_\nu M_\nu |(\lambda \mu )\kappa LM_\rho `$ (5)
$`|\{\stackrel{~}{f}_\pi \}(\lambda _\pi \mu _\pi )\kappa _\pi L_\pi M_\pi ,\stackrel{~}{S}_\pi M_{S\pi }`$ (6)
$`|\{\stackrel{~}{f}_\nu \}(\lambda _\nu \mu _\nu )\kappa _\nu L_\nu M_\nu ,\stackrel{~}{S}_\nu M_{S\nu }.`$
In the above expression $`;|`$ and $`(,|)`$ are the SU(3) and SU(2) Clebsch Gordan coefficients, respectively.

In all previous applications of the pseudo SU(3) model, only those states with the highest spatial symmetry $`\stackrel{~}{S}_{\pi ,\nu }`$ = 0 and $`\frac{1}{2}`$ have been included. In the present study states with $`\stackrel{~}{S}_{\pi ,\nu }`$ = 1 and $`\frac{3}{2}`$ are also taken into account, allowing for coupled proton-neutron states with total pseudo-spin $`\stackrel{~}{S}`$ = $`\frac{1}{2}`$, $`\frac{3}{2}`$ or $`\frac{5}{2}`$. The pseudo-spin symmetry is close enough to an exact symmetry in atomic nuclei, supporting a strong truncation of the Hilbert space. However, pseudo spin-orbit partners are not exactly degenerate, introducing a small degree of pseudo-spin mixing in the nuclear wave function.

The quadrupole-quadrupole interaction can be expressed in terms of the second order SU(3) Casimir operator $`C_2`$,

$$\widehat{Q}\widehat{Q}=4C_23\widehat{L}(\widehat{L}+1).$$
(7)
The eigenvalue of $`C_2`$ for a given of SU(3) irrep $`(\lambda ,\mu )`$ is given by

$$C_2=\lambda ^2+\mu ^2+\lambda \mu +3\lambda +3\mu .$$
(8)
The larger the expectation value of $`C_2`$, the greater the binding of that SU(3) irrep by a pure attractive $`QQ`$ interaction. The pseudo SU(3) basis is built selecting those proton and neutron irreps with the largest $`C_2`$ and pseudo-spin 0 and 1, or $`\frac{1}{2}`$ and $`\frac{3}{2}`$, for even and odd number of particles, respectively. The proton and neutron irreps are coupled to a total pseudo SU(3) $`(\lambda ,\mu )`$ irrep and to a total pseudo-spin $`\stackrel{~}{S}=\frac{1}{2},\frac{3}{2}`$ and $`\frac{5}{2}`$. The basis states employed in the present work for each of the three nuclei studied are presented in Tables 2, 3 and 4.

## III The Pseudo SU(3) Hamiltonian

The Hamiltonian contains spherical Nilsson single-particle terms for protons ($`H_{sp,\pi }`$) and neutrons ($`H_{sp,\nu }`$), the quadrupole-quadrupole ($`\stackrel{~}{Q}\stackrel{~}{Q}`$) and pairing interactions ($`H_{pair,\pi }`$ and $`H_{pair,\nu }`$), as well as three ‘rotor-like’ terms which are diagonal in the SU(3) basis.

$`H`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha =\pi ,\nu }{}}\{H_{sp,\alpha }G_\alpha H_{pair,\alpha }\}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\chi \stackrel{~}{Q}\stackrel{~}{Q}`$
$`+aK_J^2+bJ^2+A_{sym}\widehat{C}_2.`$
This Hamiltonian can be separated into two parts: the first row includes Nilsson single-particle energies and the pairing and quadrupole-quadrupole interactions ($`\stackrel{~}{Q}`$ is the quadrupole operator in the pseudo SU(3) space, see below). They are the basic components of any realistic Hamiltonian and have been widely studied in the nuclear physics literature, allowing their respective strengths to be fixed by systematics Rin79 ; Duf96 . The SU(3) mixing is due to the single-particle and pairing terms. The second row of the Hamiltonian (III) contains the so-called ‘rotor-like’ terms, used to fine tune the moment of inertia and the position of the different $`K`$ bands. They have been studied in detail in previous papers where the pseudo SU(3) symmetry was used as a dynamical symmetry Dra82 . The strength of these three terms were the only ones adjusted nuclei by nuclei. A detailed analysis of each term of this Hamiltonian and its parametrization has been presented elsewhere Var00b . In Table 5 are shown the current values. These are the same used before for these three nuclei tesis , when the proton and neutron subspaces were reduced to S = 0 and $`\frac{1}{2}`$ (in other words, the same set of parameters are working in both approximations of the theory).

The electric quadrupole operator is expressed as Dra82

$$Q_\mu =e_\pi Q_\pi +e_\nu Q_\nu e_\pi \frac{\eta _\pi +1}{\eta _\pi }\stackrel{~}{Q}_\pi +e_\nu \frac{\eta _\nu +1}{\eta _\nu }\stackrel{~}{Q}_\nu ,$$
(10)
with effective charges $`e_\pi =2.3,e_\nu =1.3`$. These values are very similar to those used in the pseudo SU(3) description of even-even nuclei Dra82 ; Beu98 . They are larger than those used in standard calculations of B(E2) strengths Rin79  due to the passive role assigned to the nucleons in unique parity orbitals, whose contribution to the quadrupole moments is parametrized in this way.

The inclusion of configurations with pseudo-spin 1 and $`\frac{3}{2}`$ in the Hilbert space allows for a description of several highly excited rotational bands in odd-mass nuclei. Their effect on the M1 transition strengths have been discussed in Ref. Var02 . The most relevant result reported there is that, when the configuration space is restricted to states with pseudo-spin 0 and $`\frac{1}{2}`$, it is not possible to find tesis  any M1 excitations with sizable strength from the ground state toward the states between 2 to 4 MeV energy region for any of the three nuclei. The M1 strength appears only when the Hilbert space is enlarged to include states with $`\stackrel{~}{S}_\pi `$ or $`\stackrel{~}{S}_\nu `$ = 1 or 3/2.

## IV Rotational bands and spin content

Fig. 1 shows the yrast and excited normal parity bands in 157Gd. Experimental nndc  data are plotted on the left hand size of each column, while those obtained using the Hilbert space and the Hamiltonian parameters discussed in the previous sections are shown in the right hand side. The agreement between both is excellent, but for the two higher energy bands the lack of more experimental data in bands E and F (see fig. 1) prevents a more rigorous comparison.

The whole energy spectra is built up by the interplay between the single-particle and quadrupole-quadrupole terms in the Hamiltonian. The use of realistic single-particle energies plays a key role in the appropriate ordering of the different band-heads.

Figs. 2 and 3 show the normal parity bands in 163Dy and 169Tm, respectively. In 163Dy the agreement between theory and experiment is very good for the seven rotational bands (A-G). These seven bands represents nearly all the bands measured. For 169Tm the agreement between the theoretical band structure and its experimental counterpart is still good, although the differences in bandhead energies are larger than in the previous cases.

The bands plotted in Figs. (1-3) have a very regular structure as one moves up the bands. The mixing remains nearly the same for the states with different angular moments belonging to the same band. As a consequence, the pseudo-spin content is practically constant along all the members of each band. Table 6 shows the calculated pseudo-spin content of each rotational band in 157Gd, 163Dy and 169Tm, respectively. As shown in Eq. (2), each eigenstate is described as a linear combination of pseudo SU(3) states $`|\beta JM`$, with pseudo-spin $`\frac{1}{2}`$, $`\frac{3}{2}`$ and $`\frac{5}{2}`$, depending on the proton and neutron pseudo-spin couplings.

In most of the bands the mixing is very small, about half of them have no mixing at all. The main contribution of the present work is to add those states with pseudo-spin $`\frac{3}{2}`$ (and those marked with a \*, see below) to the pseudo SU(3) description of these nuclei.

The total pseudo-spin content of the nuclear wave function is built with the coupling of the $`S_\pi `$ and $`S_\nu `$ components. In all the cases, the states with pseudo-spin $`\stackrel{~}{S}=\frac{3}{2}`$ are built as $`1\frac{1}{2}`$, and the $`0\frac{3}{2}`$ is not present in the bands analysed. By the other side, although most of the $`\stackrel{~}{S}=\frac{1}{2}`$ come from the coupling $`0\frac{1}{2}`$, the bands marked with a * in Table 6, are built as $`\stackrel{~}{S}_\pi =1\stackrel{~}{S}_\nu =\frac{1}{2}`$ for the band E in 157Gd and $`\stackrel{~}{S}_\pi =\frac{1}{2}\stackrel{~}{S}_\nu =1`$ for the band F in 163Dy).

## V B(E2) transition strengths

In Figures 4, 5 and 6 are shown the B(E2) intra-band transition strengths for the reported normal parity bands in 157Gd, 163Dy and 169Tm, respectively. All experimental data available nndc  have been included with error bars for comparison. For a given band, labeled A to G, the x axis represents twice the angular momentum of the initial state for each transition, while the y axis shows the B(E2) strength. The graphs on the left hand side show B(E2;J $``$ J+1) transitions, and those in the right hand side present the B(E2;J $``$ J+2), both in units of $`e^2b^2`$. The “+” symbols with segmented lines refers to the calculated values, and the diamonds with error bars to the experimental ones.

In Tables 7, 8 and 9 are shown many inter-band B(E2) transition strengths in 157Gd, 163Dy and 169Tm, respectively. All known experimental data available nndc  were included between parenthesis. Theoretical values are in agreement with those reported previously for the lowest energy bands in 163Dy Var01 .

The agreement between the calculated values with those measured is remarkable. Some transitions, like 3/2$`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{C}{}^{}`$ $``$ 7/2$`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{D}{}^{}`$, 3/2$`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{D}{}^{}`$ $``$ 7/2$`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{C}{}^{}`$ in 157Gd, and 3/2$`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{B}{}^{}`$ $``$ 7/2$`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{C}{}^{}`$, 3/2$`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{D}{}^{}`$ $``$ 7/2$`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{E}{}^{}`$, 9/2$`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{C}{}^{}`$ $``$ 11/2$`{}_{}{}^{}{}_{B}{}^{}`$ in 163Dy, are larger than 0.05 – 0.10 $`e^2b^2`$. It reflects the mixing between the different bands.

The B(M1;$`J_{g.s.}^\pi J_f^\pi `$) transitions in 157Gd, 163Dy and 169Tm have been presented in Ref. Var02 . $`J_{g.s.}^\pi `$ refers to the ground states $`\frac{3}{2}^{}`$, $`\frac{5}{2}^{}`$ and $`\frac{1}{2}^+`$, respectively, in these nuclei. In that work it was shown that most of the states with energies between 2 and 4 MeV have very important contributions from states with proton and neutron pseudo-spin 1 and $`\frac{3}{2}`$.

## VI Summary and conclusions

The pseudo SU(3) shell model for odd-mass nuclei has been shown to offer a quantitative microscopic description of several normal parity rotational bands in 157Gd, 163Dy and 169Tm. The present article complements the study of the scissors mode in these nuclei, their fragmentation and their summed B(M1;$``$) strengths.

In order to successfully describe the excited bands, intra- and inter-band B(E2) and B(M1) transition strengths, it was necessary to enlarge the Hilbert space, including those pseudo SU(3) irreps with the largest $`C_2`$ values having pseudo-spin 1 and $`\frac{3}{2}`$ and to use realistic values for the single-particle energies. This expansion of the model space allowed for the description of new low lying normal parity bands, in agreement with the experimental data. The new bands have predominantly $`\stackrel{~}{S}=\frac{3}{2}`$, but it was shown that the most important contribution comes from the proton or neutron subspaces with $`\stackrel{~}{S}=1`$. It implies that the pseudo-spin mixing in the wave function takes place mostly in the sub-space with even number of particles. The interplay between the single-particle and the quadrupole-quadrupole terms in the Hamiltonian defines this mixing. The delicated balance between these two interactions, defines the gross features of the calculated excited bands.

Intra- and inter-band B(E2) transition strengths are predicted in good agreement with their measured values and with those reported previously with the pseudo SU(3) model. Detailed description of magnetic properties of these rotational bands Stu02  and the excited bands in other rare-earth nuclei are desirable.

## VII Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by CONACyT (México) and the US National Science Foundation.