Can classical wormholes stabilize the brane–anti-brane system?

Abstract

We investigate the static solutions of Callan and Maldecena and Gibbons to lowest order Dirac–Born–Infeld theory. Among them are charged wormhole solutions connecting branes to anti-branes. It is seen that there are no such solutions when the separation between the brane and anti-brane is smaller than some minimum value. The minimum distance coincides with the energy minimum, and depends monotonically on the charge. Making the charge sufficiently large, such that the minimum separation is much bigger than α′ , may suppress known quantum processes leading to decay of the brane–anti-brane system. For this to be possible the zeroth order wormhole solutions should be reasonable approximations of solutions in the full D-brane theory. With this in mind we address the question of whether the zeroth order solutions are stable under inclusion of higher order corrections to the Dirac–Born–Infeld action.