M-momentum transfer between gravitons, membranes, and fivebranes as perturbative gauge theory processes

Abstract

Polchinski and Pouliot have shown that M-momentum transfer between membranes in super-gravity can be understood as a non-perturbative instanton effec in gauge theory. Here we consider a dual process: electric flux transmission between D-branes. We show that this process can be described in perturbation theory as virtual string pair creation, and is closely related to Schwinger's treatment of the pair creation of charged particles in a uniform electric field. Through the application of dualities, our perturbative calculation gives results for various non-perturbative amplitudes, including M-momentum transfer between gravitons, membranes and longitudinal fivebranes. Thus perturbation theory plus dualities are sufficient to demonstrate agreement between supergravity and gauge theory for a number of M-momentum transferring processes. A variety of other processes where branes are transmitted between branes, e.g. ( p, q)-string transmission in IIB theory, can also be studied. We discuss the implications of our results for proving the eleven-dimensional Lorentz invariance of Matrix theory.