Gravitational lensing by p-branes

Abstract

The scattering of R-R gauge bosons off of Dirichlet p-branes is computed to leading order in the string coupling. The results are qualitatively similar to those found in the scattering of massless NS-NS bosons: all p-branes with p ≥ 0 exhibit stringy properties, in particular the Regge behavior. Both the R-R and NS-NS scattering amplitudes agree in the limit of small momentum transfer with scattering off the extremal R-R charged p-brane solutions found in the low-energy supergravities. We interpret this as evidence that Dirichlet-branes are an exact worldsheet description of the extremal p-branes. The −1-brane (D-instanton) is a special object which, unlike all other Dirichlet-branes, exhibits point-like behavior. We show that the field theoretic scattering off of the R-R charged instanton solution to type IIB supergravity exactly reproduces the full stringy calculation. As an aside, we include a discussion of the entropy of nonextremal black holes in ten dimensions, produced by exciting the 0-brane.