Aspects of D-Branes as BPS monopoles

Abstract

We investigate some of the properties of D-brane configurations which behave as BPS monopoles. The two D-brane configurations we will study are the enhançon and D-strings attached to D3-branes.We will start by investigating D3-branes wrapped on a K3 manifold, which are known as enhançons. They look like regions of enhanced gauge symmetry in the directions transverse to the branes, and therefore behave as BPS monopoles. We calculate the metric on moduli space for n enhançons, following the methods used by Ferrell and Eardley for black holes. We expect the result to be the higher-dimensional generalisation of the Taub-NUT metric, which is the metric on moduli space for n BPS monopoles. Next we will study D-strings attached to D3-branes; the ends of the D-strings behave as BPS monopoles of the world volume gauge theory living on the D3-branes. In fact the D-string/D3-brane system is a physical realisation of the ADHMN construction for BPS monopoles. We aim to test this correspondence by calculating the energy radiated during D-string scattering, working with the non-Abelian Born-Infeld action for D-strings. We will then compare our result to the equivalent monopole calculation of Manton and Samols.