Extended objects from warped compactifications of M theory

Abstract

We study the massive spectrum of fully wrapped branes in warped M-theory compactifications, including regimes where these states are parametrically lighter than the Planck scale or string scale. We show that many such states behave classically as extended objects in the noncompact directions in the sense that their mass grows with their size as measured along the Poincare slices making up the noncompact dimensions. On the other hand, these states can be quantized in a nontrivial regime: in particular, their spectrum of excitations in a limited regime can be obtained by a warped Kaluza–Klein reduction from ten dimensions. We briefly discuss scattering processes and loop effects involving these states, and also note the possibility of an exponential growth in the number of bound states of these objects as a function of energy.