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We examine a family of BPS solutions of ten-dimensional type IIb supergravity. These solutions asymptotically approach AdS_5 X S^5 and carry internal `angular' momentum on the five-sphere. While a naked singularity appears at the center of the anti-de Sitter space, we show that it has a natural physical interpretation in terms of a collection of giant gravitons. We calculate the distribution of giant gravitons from the dipole field induced in the Ramond-Ramond five-form, and show that these sources account for the entire internal momentum carried by the BPS solutions., Comment: 15 pages, Latex

We discuss dual formulations of D-brane intersections. The duality is between world volume field theories of different dimensionalities which both describe the same D-brane configuration but are valid in complementary regions of parameter space. We discuss the duality in terms of bion configurations involving D-strings orthogonally intersecting both D3-branes and D5-branes., Comment: Talk presented by R. C. Myers at Strings 2001, Mumbai, India. 12 pages

We study new solutions of the low-energy equations of motion for the non-abelian D-string. We find a "fuzzy funnel" solution consisting of a noncommutative four-sphere geometry which expands along the length of the D-string. We show that this funnel solution has an interpretation as D-strings ending on a set of orthogonal D5-branes. Although not supersymmetric, the system appears to be stable within this framework. We also give a dual description of this configuration as a bion spike in the non-abelian world volume theory of coincident D5-branes., Comment: 33 pages, 2 figures. v2: added refs

We investigate the `giant gravitons' of McGreevy, Susskind and Toumbas [hep-th/0003075]. We demonstrate that these are BPS configurations which preserve precisely the same supersymmetries as a `point-like' graviton. We also show that there exist `dual' giant gravitons consisting of spherical branes expanding into the AdS component of the spacetime. Finally, we discuss the realization of the stringy exclusion principle within this expanded framework., Comment: 25 pages, 10 figures

We examine noncommutative solutions of the nonabelian theory on the world-volume of N coincident D-strings. These solutions can be interpreted in terms of noncommutative geometry as funnels describing the nonabelian D-string expanding out into an orthogonal D3-brane. These configurations are `dual' to the bion solutions in the abelian world-volume theory of the D3-brane. In the latter, a charge N magnetic monopole describes N D-strings attached to the D3-brane with a spike deformation of the world-volume. The noncommutative D-string solutions give a reliable account of physics at the core of the monopole, where the bion description is expected to breakdown. In the large N limit, we find good agreement between the two points of view, including the energy, couplings to background fields, and the shape of the funnel. We also study fluctuations traveling along the D-string, again obtaining agreement in the large N limit. At finite N, our results give a limit on the number of modes that can travel to infinity along the N D-strings attached to the D3-brane., Comment: 22 pages, refs added

We study baryon configurations in large N non-supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theories, applying the AdS/CFT correspondence. Using the D5-brane worldvolume theory in the near-horizon geometry of non-extremal D3-branes, we find embeddings which describe baryonic states in three-dimensional QCD. In particular, we construct solutions corresponding to a baryon made of N quarks, and study what happens when some fraction $\nu$ of the total number of quarks are bodily moved to a large spatial separation from the others. The individual clumps of quarks are represented by Born-Infeld string tubes obtained from a D5-brane whose spatial section has topology $R \times S^4$. They are connected by a confining color flux tube, described by a portion of the fivebrane that runs very close and parallel to the horizon. We find that this flux tube has a tension with a nontrivial $\nu$-dependence (not previously obtained by other methods). A similar picture is presented for the four-dimensional case., Comment: LaTeX, 20 pages, 6 eps figures; v2: added reference, corrected numerical error in Eqs. (13) and (23)

D-brane backgrounds are specified in closed string theories by holes with appropriate mixed Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions on the string worldsheet. As presently stated, the prescription defining D-brane backgrounds is such that the Einstein equation is not equivalent to the condition for scale invariance on the string worldsheet. A modified D-brane prescription is found, that leads to the desired equivalence, while preserving all known D-brane lore. A possible interpretation is that the worldsheet cutoff is finite. Possible connections to recent work of Maldacena and Strominger, and Gopakumar and Vafa are suggested., Comment: 7 pages, RevTex; v2: typos corrected, superstring calculation included, discussion expanded - to be published in Phys.Rev. D

String configurations have been identified in compactified Matrix theory at vanishing string coupling. We show how the interactions of these strings are determined by the Yang-Mills gauge field on the worldsheet. At finite string coupling, this suggests the underlying dynamics is not well-approximated as a theory of strings. This may explain why string perturbation theory diverges badly, while Matrix string perturbation theory presumably has a perturbative expansion with properties similar to the strong coupling expansion of 2d Yang-Mills theory., Comment: 2 pages, latex, minor clarifying changes of wording

We evaluate one-loop finite-time amplitudes for graviton scattering in Matrix theory and compare to the corresponding amplitudes in supergravity. We find agreement for arbitrary time intervals at leading order in distance, providing a functional agreement between supergravity and Matrix theory. At subleading order, we find corrections to the effective potential found from previous phase shift calculations in Matrix theory., Comment: 12 pages, harvmac, reference added, typo corrected

The proposal of Dijkgraaf, Verlinde and Verlinde for the emergence of smooth strings from a supersymmetric U(N) Yang-Mills theory assumes that conjugacy classes in the symmetric group with a few long cycles dominate the dynamics about the infrared fixed point. It is shown that the average number of cycles in a conjugacy class of $S_{N}$ is bounded below by $const.\sqrt N\ln\sqrt N,$ implying that some physical mechanism is needed to ensure the assumed dominance. It is shown that if individual cycles have positive energies that depend very weakly on their lengths, then long cycles dominate the dynamics at low temperatures., Comment: 2 pages, revtex

It is shown that there are logarithmic operators in D-brane backgrounds that lead to infrared divergences in open string loop amplitudes. These divergences can be cancelled by changing the closed string background by operators that correspond to the D-brane moving with constant velocity after some instant in time, since it is precisely such operators that give rise to the appropriate ultraviolet divergences in the closed string channel., Comment: Plain TeX, 5 pages