Penrose limits, supergravity and brane dynamics (Q4789700)

Penrose limits of classical string and M-theory backgrounds are investigated in detail. By rephrasing the Penrose limit in the more general context of ``limits of spacetimes'' introduced by Geroch, it is shown that the numbers both of symmetries and supersymmetries never decrease in a Penrose limit, and the symmetry superalgebra of a supergravity background gets contracted. After establishing the hereditary properties of the Penrose limit, the classification of the Penrose limits of \(\text{AdS}\times S\) spacetimes is given and it is shown that such spacetimes can have only two distinct Penrose limits: Minkowski spacetime or an Hpp-wave (pp-waves with a homogeneous geometry, say \(G/H\), and homogeneous, that is, \(G\)-invariant, fluxes). These classifications follow by determining the orbits of the isometry group of the spacetime on the space of null geodesics and invoking the covariance property of the Penrose limit, which says that null geodesics which are related by an isometry yield Penrose limits which are themselves isometric. They exhibit Penrose limits of many supergravity solutions, including: 1) M-branes, D-branes, NS-branes and their near-horizon limits; 2) intersecting brane solutions, in particular intersecting M-branes; 3) supersymmetric black hole solutions in four- and five-dimensions and string solutions in six dimensions as well as those of their near horizon geometries which are of \(\text{AdS}\times S\) type; 4) cosmological models focusing on the four-dimensional Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetime. The Penrose limit of solutions that admit an isometric embedding in flat space is studied, which naturally leads to a generalisation of the Penrose limit to spaces with more than one time. It is shown that the Penrose limit is a large tension limit for all brane probes in a spacetime, which includes branes with Born-Infeld type of worldvolume fields like D-branes and the M5-brane, and the precise dependence of the D-brane probe actions on the string tension plays a key role.