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# 1 The pion distribution amplitudes (normalized by unity): the model predictions for twist-2 (solid line) and twist-4 (dashed line) components and the perturbative asymptotic limits of twist-2 (dotted line) and twist-4 (dash-dotted line) amplitudes.

Pion distribution amplitudes within the instanton model of QCD vacuum

A. E. Dorokhov

Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research,
141980 Dubna, Russia

## Abstract

Pion transition form factor for the process $`\gamma ^{}\gamma ^{}\pi ^0`$ at space-like values of photon momenta is calculated within the effective quark-meson model with the interaction induced by instanton exchange. The leading and next-to-leading order power asymptotics of the form factor and the relation between the light-cone pion distribution amplitudes of twists 2 and 4 and the dynamically generated quark mass are found.

The pion form factor $`M_{\pi ^0}(q_1^2,q_2^2)`$ for the transition process $`\gamma ^{}(q_1)\gamma ^{}(q_2)\pi ^0(p)`$, where $`q_1`$ and $`q_2`$ are photon momenta, is related to fundamental properties of QCD dynamics at low and high energies. At zero photon virtualities the observed value of the width for the two-photon decay of the $`\pi _0`$meson

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }(\pi ^0\gamma \gamma )=\frac{e^2m_{\pi _0}^3}{64\pi }M_{\pi ^0}^2(0,0)=7.79(56)\mathrm{eV},$$
(1)
is consistent with the theoretical prediction due to the chiral anomaly for $`\pi _0`$

$$M_{\pi ^0}(0,0)=(4\pi ^2f_\pi )^1,$$
(2)
where $`f_\pi =92.4`$ MeV is the pion weak decay constant.

The existing experimental data from CELLO  and CLEO  Collaborations on the form factor $`M_{\pi ^0}`$ for one photon being almost real, $`q_2^20`$, with the virtuality of the other photon scanned up to $`8`$ GeV2, can be fitted by a monopole form factor:

$$M_{\pi ^0}(q_1^2=Q^2,q_2^2=0)|_{fit}=\frac{g_{\pi \gamma \gamma }}{1+Q^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }_\pi ^2},\mathrm{\Lambda }_\pi 0.77GeV,$$
(3)
where $`g_{\pi \gamma \gamma }=0.275`$ GeV-1 is the two-photon pion decay constant. The large $`Q^2`$ behavior of the form factor (3) is in agreement with the lowest order perturbative QCD (pQCD) prediction

$$M_{\pi ^0}(q_1^2,q_2^2)|_{Q^2\mathrm{}}=J^{(2)}\left(\omega \right)\frac{1}{Q^2}+J^{(4)}\left(\omega \right)\frac{1}{Q^4}+O(\frac{\alpha _s}{\pi })+O(\frac{1}{Q^6}),$$
(4)
where the leading (LO) and next-to-leading (NLO) order asymptotic coefficients $`J\left(\omega \right)`$ are expressed in terms of the light-cone pion distribution amplitudes (DA), $`\phi _\pi (x)`$:

$$J^{(2)}\left(\omega \right)=\frac{4}{3}f_\pi _0^1𝑑x\frac{\phi _\pi ^{(2)}(x)}{1\omega ^2(2x1)^2},J^{(4)}\left(\omega \right)=\frac{4}{3}f_\pi \mathrm{\Delta }^2_0^1𝑑x\frac{1+\omega ^2(2x1)^2}{[1\omega ^2(2x1)^2]^2}\phi _\pi ^{(4)}(x).$$
(5)
In the above expressions $`Q^2=(q_1^2+q_2^2)0`$ is the total virtuality of photons and $`\omega =(q_1^2q_2^2)/(q_1^2+q_2^2)`$ is the asymmetry in their distribution. The distribution amplitudes are normalized as $`_0^1𝑑x\phi _\pi (x)=1`$ and the parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2`$ characterizes the scale of the NLO power corrections. The first perturbative correction to the LO term in (4) has been found in  and the NLO power corrections have been discussed in ,  and more recently in  within the light-cone sum rules.

The leading momentum power dependence of the form factor (4) is dictated by the scaling property of the pion DA. But the coefficients of the power expansion depend crucially on the internal pion dynamics, which is parameterized by the nonperturbative pion DAs, $`\phi _\pi (x)`$, defined at some normalization scale $`\mu `$, with $`x`$ being the fraction of the pion momentum, $`p`$, carried by a quark. At asymptotically large normalization scale $`\mu \mathrm{}`$ the DAs are determined in pQCD:

$$\phi _{\pi ,as}^{(2)}(x)=6x(1x),\phi _{\pi ,as}^{(4)}(x)=30x^2(1x)^2.$$
(6)
However, for the description of the experimentally observable hard exclusive processes one needs to know the DAs normalized at virtuality $`\mu ^21`$ GeV2. The aim of this letter is to calculate the pion transition form factor in the kinematical region up to moderately large $`Q^2`$ and extract from its power expansion in $`1/Q^2`$ the pion DAs at normalization scale typical for hadrons. The calculations carried out within the effective model with nonlocal quark-quark interaction are consistent with the chiral anomaly and result in the relations between the DAs of twists 2 and 4 and the dynamically generated nonlocal quark mass. The usage of the covariant nonlocal low-energy model based on the Schwinger-Dyson approach to dynamics of quarks and gluons has many attractive features as the approach preserves the gauge invariance, it is consistent with the low-energy theorems and takes into account the large distance dynamics of the bound state. Furthermore, the intrinsic nonlocal structure of the model may be motivated by fundamental QCD interactions induced by the instanton and gluon exchanges.

The effective quark-pion dynamics motivated by the instanton-induced interaction111See for a review e.g. . may be summarized in terms of the dressed quark propagator

$$S^1\left(p\right)=\widehat{p}M\left(p^2\right),$$

the quark-pion vertex

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_\pi ^a\left(k,p,k^{}=k+p\right)=\frac{i}{f_\pi }F(k^2,k^2)\gamma _5\tau ^a,F(k^2,k^2)=\sqrt{M\left(k^2\right)M\left(k^2\right)},$$

and the quark-photon vertex satisfying the Ward-Takahashi identity

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }^\mu \left(k,q,k^{}=kq\right)=eQ\left[\gamma _\mu \left(k+k^{}\right)_\mu G(k^2,k^2)\right],G(k^2,k^2)=\frac{M\left(k^2\right)M\left(k^2\right)}{k^2k^2},$$

where $`M(k^2)`$ is the dynamically generated quark mass. The dynamical quark mass characterizes the momentum dependence of an order parameter for spontaneous breaking of the chiral symmetry and may be expressed in terms of the gauge invariant nonlocal quark condensate . The inverse size of the nonlocality scale, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$, is naturally related to the average virtuality of quarks that flow through the vacuum, $`\lambda _q^2\mathrm{\Lambda }^2`$. The value of $`\lambda _q^2`$ is known from the QCD sum rule analysis, $`\lambda _q^2`$ $`0.4\pm 0.1\mathrm{GeV}^2`$ , and, within the instanton model, may be expressed through the average instanton size, $`\rho _c`$, as $`\lambda _q^22\rho _c^2`$ . The pion weak decay constant is expressed by the Pagels-Stokar formula

$$f_\pi ^2=\frac{N_c}{4\pi ^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑u\frac{uM(u)\left[M(u)uM^{}(u)/2\right]}{D^2(u)},$$
(7)
where $`M^{}(u)=\frac{d}{du}M(u)`$ and $`D(u)=u+M^2(u)`$.

The invariant amplitude for the process $`\gamma ^{}\gamma ^{}\pi ^0`$ is given by

$$A\left(\gamma ^{}(q_1,ϵ_1)\gamma ^{}(q_2,ϵ_2)\pi ^0\left(p\right)\right)=ie^2\epsilon _{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }ϵ_1^\mu ϵ_2^\nu q_1^\rho q_2^\sigma M_{\pi ^0}(q_1^2,q_2^2),$$

where $`ϵ_i^\mu `$ are the photon polarization vectors. In the effective model one finds the contribution of the triangle diagram to the invariant amplitude as

$$A(\gamma _1^{}\gamma _2^{}\pi ^0)=ie^2\frac{N_c}{3f_\pi }\frac{d^4k}{(2\pi )^4}F(k_+^2,k_{}^2)\{tr[i\gamma _5S(k_{})\widehat{ϵ}_2S[kq/2]\widehat{ϵ}_1S(k_+)]+$$
(8)
$$+tr[i\gamma _5S(k_{})S[kq/2]\widehat{ϵ}_1S(k_+)](ϵ_2,2kq_1)G((kq/2)^2,k_{}^2)$$

$$+tr[i\gamma _5S(k_{})\widehat{ϵ}_2S[kq/2]S(k_+)](ϵ_1,2k+q_2)G(k_+^2,(kq/2)^2)\}+(q_1q_2;ϵ_1ϵ_2),$$

where $`p=q_1+q_2,`$ $`q=q_1q_2,`$ $`k_\pm =k\pm p/2`$. In the adopted chiral limit $`\left(p^2=m_\pi ^2=0\right)`$ with both photons real $`\left(q_i^2=0\right)`$ one finds the result

$$M_{\pi ^0}(0,0)=\frac{N_c}{6\pi ^2f_\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑u\frac{uM(u)\left[M(u)2uM^{}(u)\right]}{D^3(u)}=\frac{1}{4\pi ^2f_\pi },$$
(9)
consistent with the chiral anomaly.

The LO behavior of the form factor at large photon virtualities is given by the contribution of the first term in (8) and the NLO power corrections are generated by the second and third terms in (7) and also appear as the correction to the first term. Thus, for large $`q_1^2=q_2^2=Q^2/2`$ and $`p^2=0`$ the form factor has the asymptotics

$$M_{\pi ^0}(Q^2/2,Q^2/2)|_{Q^2\mathrm{}}=\frac{4f_\pi }{3Q^2}\left(1+\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }^2}{Q^2}\right)+O(\frac{1}{Q^6}),$$
(10)
$$\mathrm{\Delta }^2=\frac{N_c}{4\pi ^2f_\pi ^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑u\frac{u^2M(u)(M(u)+\frac{1}{3}uM^{}(u))}{D^2(u)},$$
(11)
which is in agreement with the expressions (4), (5) for the asymptotic coefficients at $`\omega =0`$. The parameter $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2`$ has an extra power of $`u`$ in the integral with respect to (7) and thus it is proportional to the matrix element $`\pi (p)\left|g_s\overline{d}\stackrel{~}{G}_{\alpha \mu }\gamma _\alpha p_\mu u\right|0`$. The power correction (11) is the sum of the positive contribution coming from the higher Fock states in the pion, effectively taken into account by the second and third terms in (8), and also the negative two-particle contribution due to the first term in (8)222In  only part of the NLO power corrections has been discussed.. Note, that the model provides the opposite sign of the power correction comparing with the QCD sum rule prediction .

In general case at large $`Q^2`$ the model calculations reproduce the QCD factorization result (4),(5) with the DAs given by

$$\phi _\pi ^{(2)}(x)=\frac{N_c}{4\pi ^2f_\pi ^2}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{d\lambda }{2\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}du\frac{F(u+i\lambda \overline{x},ui\lambda x)}{D\left(ui\lambda x\right)D\left(u+i\lambda \overline{x}\right)}[xM(u+i\lambda \overline{x})+(x\overline{x})],$$
(12)
$$\phi _\pi ^{(4)}(x)=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Delta }^2}\frac{N_c}{4\pi ^2f_\pi ^2}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{d\lambda }{2\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}du\frac{uF(u+i\lambda \overline{x},ui\lambda x)}{D\left(ui\lambda x\right)D\left(u+i\lambda \overline{x}\right)}[\overline{x}M(u+i\lambda \overline{x})+(x\overline{x})].$$
(13)
In these expressions the $`u`$-variable plays the role of the quark transverse momentum squared, $`\stackrel{}{k}_{}^2`$, and $`\lambda x,`$ $`\lambda \overline{x}`$ are the longitudinal projections of the quark momentum on the light cone directions. The model DAs are defined at the normalization scale characterized by the vacuum nonlocality $`\mu ^2\mathrm{\Lambda }^2`$. Concerning the LO DA, $`\phi _\pi ^{(2)}(x)`$, the similar results within the instanton model have been earlier derived in .

In Fig. 1 the normalized by unity LO and NLO pion DAs are illustrated in comparison with perturbative asymptotic DAs. For the numerical analysis the dynamical mass profile is chosen in the Gaussian form $`M(k^2)=M_q\mathrm{exp}(2k^2/\mathrm{\Lambda }^2),`$ where we take $`M_q=350`$ MeV and fix $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=1.29`$ GeV from the pion constant (7). Then, the value $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2J^{(4)}(\omega =1)/`$ $`J^{(2)}\left(\omega =1\right)=0.205`$ GeV2 is obtained which characterizes the scale of the power corrections in the hard exclusive processes. The mean square radius of the pion for the transition $`\gamma ^{}\pi ^0\gamma `$ is $`r_{\pi \gamma }^2=(0.566`$ fm$`)^2`$ and numerically close to the value derived from (3). As it is clear from Fig. 1, the predicted pion DAs at the realistic choice of the model parameters are close to the asymptotic DAs. The corresponding conclusion with respect the LO DA is in agreement with the results obtained in  as it is seen from comparison of Figs. 1 and 2.

The asymptotic coefficients $`J^{(2,4)}(\omega )`$ given by (5), (12) and (13) may be identically rewritten in the form

$$J^{(2)}\left(\omega \right)=\frac{1}{\pi ^2f_\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}duu_0^{\mathrm{}}dv\{\frac{M^{1/2}\left(z_{}\right)}{D(z_{})}\frac{}{z_+}\left(\frac{M^{3/2}\left(z_+\right)}{D(z_+)}\right)+(z_{}z_+)\},$$
(14)
$$J^{(4)}\left(\omega \right)=\frac{2}{\pi ^2f_\pi }_0^{\mathrm{}}du_0^{\mathrm{}}dvv\{\frac{M^{1/2}\left(z_{}\right)}{D(z_{})}[\frac{M^{3/2}\left(z_+\right)}{D(z_+)}+u\frac{}{z_+}\left(\frac{M^{3/2}\left(z_+\right)}{D(z_+)}\right)]+(z_{}z_+)\},$$
(15)
where $`z_\pm =u+v(1\pm \omega )`$. With the model parameters given above we find the asymptotic coefficients $`J^{(2)}\left(\omega =1\right)=0.171`$ GeV and $`J^{(4)}\left(1\right)/J^{(2)}\left(1\right)=0.254`$ GeV2 for the process $`\gamma \gamma ^{}\pi ^0`$. When the error in the experimental fit is taken into account, the estimate of the LO coefficient, $`J^{(2)}\left(1\right),`$ is in agreement with the fit of CLEO data $`J_{\mathrm{exp}}^{(2)}\left(1\right)=0.16\pm 0.03`$ GeV. The NLO power correction, $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2`$, grows by 20% with changing the kinematics from equally distributed photon virtualities to asymmetric distribution.

In Figs. 3 and 4 we plot the model predictions for the form factors $`F_{\pi \gamma }(Q^2)=M_{\pi ^0}(Q^2,0)`$ and $`F_{\pi \gamma ^{}\gamma ^{}}(Q^2)=M_{\pi ^0}(Q^2/2,Q^2/2)`$ multiplied by square momentum $`Q^2`$ for the process $`\gamma \gamma ^{}\pi ^0`$ and $`\gamma ^{}\gamma ^{}\pi ^0`$, correspondingly. In Fig. 3 we also indicate the CLEO data. In the model form factors the perturbative $`\alpha _s`$ corrections  to the leading twist-2 term are taken into account with the running coupling, $`\alpha _s(Q^2)`$, that has zero at zero momentum . With such effective behaviour in the infrared region the perturbative corrections do not influent the chiral anomaly. At high momentum squared the leading perturbative correction provides negative contribution to the form factors and compensate the NLO power corrections in the region $`210`$ GeV2. The unknown perturbative corrections to the twist-4 contribution is considered as inessential. The power corrections generated by the twist-3 pion DAs are also negligible since they are proportional to the small current quark mass.

In conclusion, within the covariant nonlocal model describing the quark-pion dynamics, we obtain the $`\pi \gamma ^{}\gamma ^{}`$ transition form factor in the region up to moderately high momentum transfer squared, where the perturbative QCD evolution does not reach the asymptotic regime yet. From the comparison of the kinematical dependence of the coefficients of the power expansion in $`1/Q^2`$ of the transition pion form factor, as it is given by pQCD and the nonperturbative model, the relations Eqs. (12, 13) between the pion DAs and the dynamical quark mass and quark-pion vertex are derived. The other possible sources of contributions to the form factor arise from inclusion into the model of the low lying vector and axial-vector mesons. They do not change the result given by the chiral anomaly (9) for the two-gamma pion decay. The contributions of the vector mesons to the leading order asymptotics of the form factor are expected to be small, but they may be more important in treating the twist-4 power corrections and the pion mean radius.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to A.P. Bakulev, W. Broniowski, A. Di Giacomo, A.S. Gorski, N.I. Kochelev, S.V. Mikhailov, M.K. Volkov, L. Tomio and V.L. Yudichev for many useful discussions on topics related to this work. The work is supported by RFBR Grants 01-02-16431 and 02-02-16194 and by Grant INTAS-2000-366.


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# ULB-TH/02-35 Varying 𝛼 and black hole entropy

## Acknowledgements

We are grateful for conversations with Tom Dent, Jean-Marie Frère and Philippe Spindel. This work is supported by the IUAP program of the Belgian Federal Government. MF is funded by an IISN grant and MT is funded by the FNRS.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Tubular configurations of $`D2`$-branes preserving some supersymmetries became a subject of interest in recent years -. The supertube configuration of circular cross-section was introduced in  from the world-volume point of view, and its corresponding supergravity solution was presented in . In  the generalization to arbitrary cross-section was found.

The supertube has zero $`D2`$ charge, which agrees with its interpretation as the “blown-up” configuration arising when $`D0`$ charge is disolved in a bundle of $`F1`$ superstrings. Being $`\frac{1}{4}`$-supersymmetric, the blown-up configuration is self supported against collapse.

The T-dual configuration along the longitudinal axis of the supertube has been presented in ; from the author’s analysis of the boundary conditions arising on a superstring that ends on the supertube the picture of a “super $`D`$-helix” emerged. The ST-dual of the super D-helix was studied in  and identified with the type IIA supercurve, i.e. a string with an arbitrary transverse displacement traveling at the speed of light.

In the present paper a $`D6`$-brane configuration is obtained by T-dualizing the supertube. Somewhat surprisingly, it can be uplifted to a purely geometrical eleven dimensional solution, that in view of the supersymmetries preserved by the original supertube has a special holonomy group.

## 2 The supertube solution

The supergravity solution sourced by $`N`$ coincident supertubes with arbitrary cross section is given by

$`ds_{\mathit{10}}^2`$ $`=`$ $`V^{1/2}U^1(dtA)^2+V^{1/2}(U^1dz^2+d\stackrel{}{y}d\stackrel{}{y}+d\stackrel{}{x}d\stackrel{}{x})`$ (1)
$`B_\mathit{2}`$ $`=`$ $`U^1(dtA)dz+dtdz`$ (2)
$`C_\mathit{1}`$ $`=`$ $`V^1(dtA)dt`$ (3)
$`C_\mathit{3}`$ $`=`$ $`U^1dtdzA`$ (4)
$`e^\varphi `$ $`=`$ $`U^{1/2}V^{3/4}`$ (5)
where the coordinates of ten dimensional spacetime are $`(t,z,\stackrel{}{y},\stackrel{}{x})`$. The supertube we will consider has the topology $`𝒞\times \text{R}`$ where the R direction is identified with the $`z`$ variable and $`𝒞`$ is an arbitrary curve embedded in the $`\stackrel{}{y}=(y_1,y_2,y_3)`$ hyperplane; $`\stackrel{}{x}\text{R}^5`$ are coordinates transverse to the supertube.

The harmonic functions $`U(\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{y})`$, $`V(\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{y})`$ and the 1-form $`A=\stackrel{}{A}(\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{y}).d\stackrel{}{y}`$ are given by:

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill U(\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{y})1\\ \hfill V(\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{y})1\\ \hfill \stackrel{}{A}(\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{y})\end{array}\}=\frac{1}{6\mathrm{\Omega }_7}_𝒞𝑑\sigma \frac{1}{R(\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{y};\sigma )^6}\{\begin{array}{c}|\pi (\sigma )|\hfill \\ |B(\sigma )|\hfill \\ N\stackrel{}{y}^{}(\sigma )\hfill \end{array}$$
(6)
where we have defined $`R(\stackrel{}{x},\stackrel{}{y};\sigma )=\sqrt{(\stackrel{}{y}\stackrel{}{y}(\sigma ))(\stackrel{}{y}\stackrel{}{y}(\sigma ))+\stackrel{}{x}\stackrel{}{x}}`$, and the cross-section $`𝒞`$ of the supertube is specified by the functions $`\stackrel{}{y}=\stackrel{}{y}(\sigma )`$, the $`F1`$-string and $`D0`$-brane charge densities are denoted $`\pi (\sigma )`$ and $`B(\sigma )`$ respectively. Here $`\mathrm{\Omega }_q`$ is the volume of a $`q`$-sphere of unit radius.

The gauge-invariant field-strengths derived form the Neveu-Schwarz $`B_\mathit{2}`$ and Ramond-Ramond $`C_p`$ forms are given by

$`H_\mathit{3}=dB_\mathit{2},G_\mathit{2}=dC_\mathit{1},G_\mathit{4}=dC_\mathit{3}+H_\mathit{3}C_\mathit{1}`$ (7)
For the solution (5) they read

$`H_\mathit{3}`$ $`=`$ $`U^2dU(dtA)dz+U^1dAdz`$ (8)
$`G_\mathit{2}`$ $`=`$ $`V^2dV(dtA)V^1dA`$ (9)
$`G_\mathit{4}`$ $`=`$ $`U^1V^1(dtA)dzdA`$ (10)
The Hodge duals of the above RR-curvatures are

$`G_\mathit{6}`$ $``$ $`_{\mathit{10}}G_\mathit{4}dC_\mathit{5}+H_\mathit{3}C_\mathit{3}=_\mathit{8}dA`$ (11)
$`G_\mathit{8}`$ $``$ $`_{\mathit{10}}G_\mathit{2}dC_\mathit{7}H_\mathit{3}C_\mathit{5}=(U^1G_\mathit{6}(dtA)_\mathit{8}dV)dz`$ (12)
where $`_\mathit{8}`$ stands for the eight-dimensional Hodge dual with respect to the Euclidean $`(\stackrel{}{y},\stackrel{}{x})`$ space and the dual potentials, defined according to the equations of motion333We follow conventions of ., are given by

$`C_\mathit{5}`$ $`=`$ $`_\mathit{8}T_\mathit{3}`$ (13)
$`C_\mathit{7}`$ $`=`$ $`_\mathit{8}T_\mathit{2}dz+U^1C_\mathit{5}(dtA)dz`$ (14)
where we have introduced the two new forms $`T_\mathit{2}`$ and $`T_\mathit{3}`$ that must satisfy the constraints

$`d_\mathit{8}T_\mathit{3}=_\mathit{8}dA,d_\mathit{8}T_\mathit{2}=_\mathit{8}dV`$ (15)
## 3 T-duality

Let $`(x^\mu ,y)`$ be coordinates in which a $`y`$-translation is a symmetry of the whole background (metric $`G_{MN}`$, antisymmetric tensor $`B_{MN}`$, dilaton $`\varphi `$, RR fields $`C_p`$) and $`(x^\mu )`$ coordinates in nine space-time dimensions. Then to perform a T-duality in $`y`$-direction we use the following form of the duality rules; on NS-NS fields

$`\stackrel{~}{ds}_{\mathit{10}}^2`$ $`=`$ $`ds_\mathit{9}^2+G_{yy}{}_{}{}^{1}(b+dy)_{}^{2}G_{yy}g^2`$ (16)
$`\stackrel{~}{B}_\mathit{2}`$ $`=`$ $`B_\mathit{2}|_\mathit{9}+g(b+dy)`$ (17)
$`e^{\stackrel{~}{\varphi }}`$ $`=`$ $`G_{yy}{}_{}{}^{1/2}e_{}^{\varphi }`$ (18)
where $`gG_{yy}^{}{}_{}{}^{1}G_{\mu y}dx^\mu `$, $`bB_{\mu y}dx^\mu `$ and $`B_\mathit{2}|_\mathit{9}=B_{\mu \nu }dx^\mu dx^\nu `$, and on RR-fields

$`\stackrel{~}{C}_n`$ $`=`$ $`(_y;C_{n+\mathit{1}})+(_y;C_{n\mathit{1}})(b+dy)g+(_y;C_{n\mathit{1}}dy)b+C_{n\mathit{1}}dy`$ (19)
where $`(u;t_{n+\mathit{1}})_{\mu _1\mathrm{}\mu _n}u^\mu t_{\mu _1\mathrm{}\mu _n\mu }`$.

We will use these rules to T-dualize the solution (5) in the directions $`(z,\stackrel{}{x})`$. After the first T-duality in the $`z`$ direction, the resulting non-zero fields are

$`ds_{\mathit{10}}^2`$ $`=`$ $`V^{1/2}\left((U1)dz_{}^{+}{}_{}{}^{2}dz^+(dz^{}2A)\right)+V^{1/2}(d\stackrel{}{y}d\stackrel{}{y}+d\stackrel{}{x}d\stackrel{}{x})`$ (20)
$`C_\mathit{2}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(V^1(dz^{}2A)dz^{}\right)dz^+`$ (21)
$`C_\mathit{6}`$ $`=`$ $`C_\mathit{5}dz^++_\mathit{8}T_\mathit{2}`$ (22)
$`e^\varphi `$ $`=`$ $`V^{1/2}`$ (23)
where $`z^\pm =t\pm z`$, $`C_\mathit{5}`$ and $`T_\mathit{2}`$ are given in (14) and (15) respectively. This supergravity solution corresponds to the super D-helix first studied in , the ST-dual of which is the supercurve of . Here we see that the $`B_\mathit{2}`$ form vanishes. This is due to the fact that the $`F`$-strings extending in the $`z`$ direction are transformed into light-like momentum modes in the $`z`$ direction after the T-dualization.

In order to perform a T-duality in a given direction, the fields have to be independent of the corresponding variable. This is achieved by delocalizing the solution, i.e. forming an array of supertubes in the direction to be T-dualized and taking the limit in which the separating distance goes to zero and the charge densities remain constant. For each one the $`\stackrel{}{x}`$ directions, the net effect of these operations in (6) is to decrease the power of $`R(\sigma )`$ in one, eliminating the corresponding dependence. The $`(q1)\mathrm{\Omega }_q`$ denominator in the solutions goes to $`(q2)\mathrm{\Omega }_{q1}`$ on each step. After delocalizing the supertube in the five $`\stackrel{}{x}`$ directions we obtain

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill U(\stackrel{}{y})1\\ \hfill V(\stackrel{}{y})1\\ \hfill \stackrel{}{A}(\stackrel{}{y})\end{array}\}=\frac{1}{4\pi }_𝒞𝑑\sigma \frac{1}{|\stackrel{}{y}y(\sigma )|}\{\begin{array}{c}|\pi (\sigma )|\hfill \\ |B(\sigma )|\hfill \\ N\stackrel{}{y}^{}(\sigma )\hfill \end{array}$$
(24)
It will be convenient in what follows to rewrite the $`T_\mathit{2}`$ and $`T_\mathit{3}`$ forms in terms of their 3-dimensional Hodge duals w.r.t. the $`\stackrel{}{y}`$ variables, $`T_\mathit{1}=_\mathit{3}T_\mathit{2}=\stackrel{}{T}d\stackrel{}{y}`$ and $`T=_\mathit{3}T_\mathit{3}`$, then the constraints (15) are written as

$`\stackrel{}{}T=\stackrel{}{}\times \stackrel{}{A},\stackrel{}{}\times \stackrel{}{T}=\stackrel{}{}V`$ (25)
Next we will T-dualize (23) in the five $`\stackrel{}{x}`$ directions, which are transverse to the supertube. We obtain

$`ds_{\mathit{10}}^2`$ $`=`$ $`V^{1/2}\left((U1)dz_{}^{+}{}_{}{}^{2}dz^+(dz^{}2A)+d\stackrel{}{x}d\stackrel{}{x}\right)+V^{1/2}d\stackrel{}{y}d\stackrel{}{y}`$
$`C_\mathit{1}`$ $`=`$ $`T_\mathit{1}Tdz^+`$
$`C_\mathit{7}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\left(V^1(dz^{}2A)dz^{}\right)dz^+dx_1\mathrm{}dx_5`$ (26)
$`e^\varphi `$ $`=`$ $`V^{3/4}.`$ (27)
Let us remark here that the NS 2-form $`B_\mathit{2}`$ and the RR 3-form $`C_\mathit{3}`$ vanish, which implies that this solution can be uplifted to a purely geometrical eleven dimensional configuration, as we will see in the next section.

## 4 Eleven dimensional metric and reduced holonomy

### Uplifting to eleven dimensions

Let us carry out the uplifting to $`D=11`$ of the $`D6`$-brane like solution of $`D=10`$ SUGRA IIA just found, according to the standard recipe

$`ds_{\mathit{11}}^2`$ $`=`$ $`e^{\frac{2}{3}\varphi }ds_{\mathit{10}}^2+e^{\frac{4}{3}\varphi }\left(d\psi +C_\mathit{1}\right)^2`$ (28)
$`A_\mathit{3}`$ $`=`$ $`C_\mathit{3}+B_\mathit{2}d\psi `$ (29)
where $`\psi `$ is the eleventh dimension. Being $`C_\mathit{3}=B_\mathit{2}=0`$ we get $`A_\mathit{3}=0`$, i.e. the solution is a pure geometric one. It reads

$`ds_{\mathit{11}}^2`$ $`=`$ $`ds_{\mathit{1},\mathit{5}}^2+d\stackrel{}{x}d\stackrel{}{x}`$ (30)
$`ds_{\mathit{1},\mathit{5}}^2`$ $`=`$ $`\left(U1+V^1T^2\right)dz_{}^{+}{}_{}{}^{2}dz^+\left(dz^{}+𝒜\right)+Vd\stackrel{}{y}d\stackrel{}{y}+V^1\left(d\psi +T_\mathit{1}\right)^2`$ (31)
where $`𝒜=2A+2V^1T(d\psi +T_\mathit{1})`$ is the so called Sagnac connection .

It will be convenient in what follows to work in a local basis, so let us introduce the following elfbein $`\{\omega ^A\}`$ together with the dual basis $`\{e_A\}`$ in $`T(M)`$, $`(e_A;\omega ^B)=\delta _A^B`$,

$`\begin{array}{cc}\omega ^0=U^{\frac{1}{2}}(dtA)\hfill & e_0=U^{1/2}(_t(1U^1)_z+U^1T_\psi )\hfill \\ \omega ^i=V^{\frac{1}{2}}dy^i\hfill & e_i=V^{1/2}(_i+A_i(_t_z)T_i_\psi )\hfill \\ \omega ^4=V^{\frac{1}{2}}\left(dx^{10}+C_\mathit{1}\right)\hfill & e_4=V^{1/2}_\psi \hfill \\ \omega ^5=U^{\frac{1}{2}}\left(Udz+(U1)dt+A\right)\hfill & e_5=U^{1/2}(_z+T_\psi )\hfill \\ \omega ^a=dx^{a5}\hfill & e_a=_{x^{a5}}\hfill \end{array}`$ (37)
(38)
where $`i=1,2,3`$ and $`a=6,\mathrm{},10`$ and $`C_\mathit{1}`$ is given in (27). The metric (31) is simply

$$ds_{\mathit{11}}^2=\eta _{AB}\omega ^A\omega ^B,\eta =diag(1,1,\mathrm{},1)$$
(39)
The (pseudo) Riemannian connection is a one-form valued (in general) in the $`spin(1,10)`$ algebra

$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\omega ^{AB}X_{AB}`$ (40)
$`[X_{AB};X_{CD}]`$ $`=`$ $`\eta _{AD}X_{BC}+\eta _{BC}X_{AD}(AB)`$ (41)
and its components are fixed by the conditions of metricity and no-torsion

$$\omega ^{AB}=\omega ^{BA},d\omega ^A+\omega ^{AB}\omega _B=0$$
(42)
For the metric (39) we get the following non-zero components

$`\omega _{0i}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}V^1U^{\frac{1}{2}}\left(V^{\frac{1}{2}}U^{\frac{1}{2}}_iU(\omega ^0+\omega ^5)+ϵ_{ijk}B_k\omega ^jB_i\omega ^4\right)=\omega _{i5}`$ (43)
$`\omega _{04}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}V^1U^{\frac{1}{2}}B_i\omega ^i=\omega _{45}`$ (44)
$`\omega _{05}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}V^{\frac{1}{2}}U^1_iU\omega ^i=d\mathrm{ln}U^{\frac{1}{2}}`$ (45)
$`\omega _{i4}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}V^{\frac{3}{2}}\left(V^{\frac{1}{2}}U^{\frac{1}{2}}B_i(\omega ^0+\omega ^5)+ϵ_{ijk}_jV\omega ^k+_iV\omega ^4\right)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}ϵ_{ijk}\omega _{jk}`$ (46)
where $`B_i=ϵ_{ijk}_jA_k`$ and indices are raised and lowered with $`(\eta _{AB})`$.

The curvature tensor is a two-form valued (in general) in $`spin(1,10)`$

$`R`$ $``$ $`d\mathrm{\Omega }+\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{\Omega }={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}R^{AB}X_{AB}`$ (47)
$`R_{AB}`$ $``$ $`d\omega _{AB}+\omega _{AC}\omega ^C{}_{B}{}^{}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}R_{ABCD}\omega ^C\omega ^D`$ (48)
It is straightforwardly computed from (38), (46); we get444 It is worth to note a subtlety that arises when “magnetic” sources coupled to gravity are present. While the properties of the curvature tensor $`R_{ABCD}=R_{ABDC}=R_{BACD}`$ follow from the two-form condition and metricity respectively more or less by definition, the torsionless condition in (42) leads to the anomaly relation
$$R_{ABCD}R_{CDAB}=\frac{1}{2}(d_{ABCD}d_{CDAB}+d_{DABC}d_{BCDA})$$
(49) where we have defined    $`d^2\omega ^A`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3!}}d^A{}_{BCD}{}^{}\omega _{}^{B}\omega ^C\omega ^C`$  (50)   $`d^A_{BCD}`$ $``$ $`e_B{}_{}{}^{M}e_{C}^{}{}_{}{}^{N}e_{D}^{}{}_{}{}^{P}([_M;_N]\omega _P{}_{}{}^{A}+[_P;_M]\omega _N{}_{}{}^{A}+[_N;_P]\omega _M{}_{}{}^{A})`$  (51) In “normal” conditions (when the vielbein is smooth enough such that derivatives commute on them) the coefficients $`\{d_{ABCD}\}`$ are identically null and the textbook property $`R_{ABCD}=R_{CDAB}`$ holds; however when ”Dirac string” like singularities are present its generalization (49) must be considered. In the case at hand (38), (39) it can be shown by using (25) that the non-trivial anomaly terms are    $`R_{i4jk}R_{jki4}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}d_{4ijk}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}ϵ_{ijk}V^2^2V`$  (52)   $`R_{04ij}R_{ij04}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}d_{40ij}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}ϵ_{ijk}U^{\frac{1}{2}}V^{\frac{3}{2}}^2A_k=R_{54ij}R_{ij54}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}d_{45ij}=R_{4i0j}R_{0j4i}=R_{4i5j}R_{5j4i}`$  (53) Explicit computation shows them up in (64).

$`R_{0i}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}U^1V^2((4B_iB_j+\delta _{ij}(\stackrel{}{}U\stackrel{}{}V\stackrel{}{B}{}_{}{}^{2})+2V_i_jU`$ (58)
$`_iU_jV_jU_iV)\omega ^jϵ_{ijk}_jU_kV\omega ^4)(\omega ^0+\omega ^5)`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}U^{\frac{1}{2}}V^{\frac{5}{2}}\left(\stackrel{}{B}\stackrel{}{}V\delta _{il}2B_i_lVB_l_iV+V_iB_l\right)\omega ^4\omega ^l`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}ϵ_{ljk}\left(R_{0i4l}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}U^{\frac{1}{2}}V^{\frac{3}{2}}ϵ_{lim}^2A_m\right)\omega ^j\omega ^k`$
$`R_{04}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}U^1V^2((\stackrel{}{B}{}_{}{}^{2}+\stackrel{}{}U\stackrel{}{}V)\omega ^4ϵ_{ijk}_jU_kV\omega ^i)(\omega ^0+\omega ^5)`$ (60)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}ϵ_{ijk}\left(R_{k404}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}U^{\frac{1}{2}}V^{\frac{3}{2}}^2A_k\right)\omega ^i\omega ^j`$
$`R_{05}`$ $`=`$ $`0`$ (61)
$`R_{i4}`$ $`=`$ $`\left(\left(R_{0ji4}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}U^{\frac{1}{2}}V^{\frac{3}{2}}ϵ_{ijk}^2A_k\right)\omega ^j{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}U^{\frac{1}{2}}V^{\frac{5}{2}}ϵ_{ijk}B_j_kV\omega ^4\right)(\omega ^0+\omega ^5)`$ (62)
$`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}V^3\left(\stackrel{}{}V\stackrel{}{}V\delta _{ij}3_iV_jV+V_j_iV\right)\omega ^j\omega ^4`$ (63)
$``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}ϵ_{ljk}(R_{l4i4}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}V^2^2V\delta _{li})\omega ^j\omega ^k`$ (64)
while the other components are obtained from the relations

$$R_{i5}=R_{0i},R_{45}=R_{04};R_{ij}=ϵ_{ijk}R_{k4}$$
(65)
The non-zero components of the Ricci tensor $`_{AB}R^C{}_{ACB}{}^{}=_{BA}`$ and Ricci scalar result

$`_{00}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}V^1U^1^2U=_{55},_{ij}=_{44}\delta _{ij},_{44}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}V^2^2V`$ (67)
$`^A{}_{A}{}^{}=V^2^2V`$
This shows that the metric is a solution of $`D=11`$ SUGRA coupled to an object living on the curve $`𝒞`$, being Ricci flat outside it555 Let us remind the reader that from (24) it follows that
$$^2\{\begin{array}{c}U(\stackrel{}{y})\hfill \\ V(\stackrel{}{y})\hfill \\ \stackrel{}{A}(\stackrel{}{y})\hfill \end{array}=_𝒞𝑑\sigma \delta ^3(\stackrel{}{y}\stackrel{}{y}(\sigma ))\{\begin{array}{c}|\pi (\sigma )|\hfill \\ |B(\sigma )|\hfill \\ N\stackrel{}{y}^{}(\sigma )\hfill \end{array}$$
(68) .

### Holonomy group and Killing spinors

It is clear that, being reducible, the holonomy group of (31) will be $`Hol(ds_{11}^2)=Hol(ds_{1,5}^2)\times Hol(d\stackrel{}{x}d\stackrel{}{x})=Hol(ds_{1,5}^2)Spin(1,5)`$, but being the solution $`\frac{1}{4}`$-supersymmetric (see below for more) the holonomy will be further reduced. To see this let us introduce the light-cone generators $`X^{\pm a}X^{0a}\pm X^{5a},a=1,2,3,4,X^+=2X^{05}`$ and in terms of them the following (redundant) ones

$`T_i^{(\pm )}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}ϵ_{ijk}X_{jk}\pm {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}X_{i4},i=1,2,3`$ (69)
$`t_\pm ^1`$ $`=`$ $`X^{+3}iX^{+4},\overline{t}_\pm ^1=X^{+3}\pm iX^{+4}`$ (70)
$`t_\pm ^2`$ $`=`$ $`X^{+1}+iX^{+2},\overline{t}_\pm ^2=X^{+1}iX^{+2}`$ (71)
leaving aside $`\{X^a,a=1,2,3,4,+\}`$ which will not play any role in the discussion. It is easy to check the following commutation relations

$`[T_i^{(\pm )};T_j^{(\pm )}]`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ_{ijk}T_k^{(\pm )},[T_i^{(+)};T_j^{()}]=0`$ (72)
$`[T_i^{(\pm )};t_\pm ^\alpha ]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\sigma _i{}_{}{}^{\alpha }{}_{\beta }{}^{}t_{\pm }^{\beta },[T_i^{(\pm )};\overline{t}_\pm ^\alpha ]={\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\sigma _i^{}{}_{}{}^{\alpha }{}_{\beta }{}^{}\overline{t}_{\pm }^{\beta }`$ (73)
$`[t_\pm ^\alpha ;t_\pm ^\beta ]`$ $`=`$ $`[t_\pm ^\alpha ;\overline{t}_\pm ^\beta ]=[t_+^\alpha ;t_{}^\beta ]=[t_+^\alpha ;\overline{t}_{}^\beta ]=0`$ (74)
The first line is just the $`spin(4)su(2)_+\times su(2)_{}`$ subalgebra of $`spin(1,5)`$, while the second line indicates that $`(t_\pm ^\alpha )`$ and $`(\overline{t}_\pm ^\alpha )`$ transform in the spin $`\frac{1}{2}`$ representation of $`su(2)_\pm `$ and its conjugate (equivalent anyway) respectively. Finally the third line implies that $`\{t_\pm ^\alpha ,\overline{t}_\pm ^\alpha \}`$ expand an abelian subalgebra.

Now from the curvature tensor we can read the Lie algebra $`hol(ds_{11}^2)`$ of $`Hol(ds_{11}^2)`$; from (64), (65) it takes the form

$$R=R_{0i}T_i^{()}+\frac{1}{2}((R_{03}iR_{04})t_{}^1+(R_{01}iR_{02})t_{}^2+h.c.)$$
(75)
which shows that $`hol(ds_{11}^2)`$ is the seven dimensional subalgebra whose elements can be written as

$$X=ϵ_iT_i^{()}+ϵ_\alpha t_{}^\alpha +\overline{ϵ}_\alpha \overline{t}_{}^\alpha ,ϵ_i\text{R},\overline{ϵ}_\alpha =ϵ_\alpha ^{}$$
(76)
It is given by

$`[T_i^{()};T_j^{()}]=ϵ_{ijk}T_k^{()},[T_i^{()};t_{}^\alpha ]={\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\sigma _i{}_{}{}^{\alpha }{}_{\beta }{}^{}t_{}^{\beta },[T_i^{()};\overline{t}_{}^\alpha ]={\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}\sigma _i^{}{}_{}{}^{\alpha }{}_{\beta }{}^{}\overline{t}_{}^{\beta }`$ (77)
$`[t_{}^\alpha ;t_{}^\beta ]=[t_{}^\alpha ;\overline{t}_{}^\beta ]=[\overline{t}_{}^\alpha ;\overline{t}_{}^\beta ]=0`$ (78)
On the other hand, in view of the pure geometric character of the solution we have that the variation of the gravitino field $`\chi _A^\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ under a SUGRA transformation is just

$$\delta _ϵ\chi _A^\mathrm{\Lambda }=D_Aϵ^\mathrm{\Lambda }=e_A(ϵ^\mathrm{\Lambda })+S(\mathrm{\Omega })^\mathrm{\Lambda }{}_{\mathrm{\Lambda }^{}}{}^{}ϵ_{}^{\mathrm{\Lambda }^{}}$$
(79)
where the parameter $`ϵ^\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ is a thirty two component Majorana spinor and $`S(\mathrm{\Omega })`$ is the connection (41) valued in the spinorial representation. The solution will preserve the SUSY’s that annihilate the gravitino variation, so the Killing spinors will be the covariantly constant ones. Specifically in a Weyl basis where for definiteness we take

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_m=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0_{16}& \gamma _m\\ \gamma _m& 0_{16}\end{array}\right);\mathrm{\Gamma }_9=i\left(\begin{array}{cc}0_{16}& 1_{16}\\ 1_{16}& 0_{16}\end{array}\right);\mathrm{\Gamma }_{10}=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1_{16}& 0_{16}\\ 0_{16}& 1_{16}\end{array}\right)$$
(80)
where $`\{\gamma _m,m=0,1,\mathrm{},8\}`$ are gamma-matrices of $`spin(1,8)`$, the condition $`\delta _ϵ\chi _A^\mathrm{\Lambda }=D_Aϵ^\mathrm{\Lambda }=0`$ results equivalent to

$`ϵ`$ $`=`$ $`U^{\frac{1}{4}}ϵ_0,\text{with}\{\begin{array}{ccc}\hfill \mathrm{\Gamma }_{05}ϵ_0& =\hfill & \hfill ϵ_0\\ \hfill \mathrm{\Gamma }_{1234}ϵ_0& =\hfill & \hfill ϵ_0\end{array}`$ (83)
with $`ϵ_0`$ a constant spinor. Equation (83) signals the preservation of $`8=\frac{1}{4}\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}32}`$ of the supersymmetries as it happened for the supertube. 666 We note that the Killing spinors can be made constant through a Lorentz boost that eliminates the part of the connection that does not lie in the holonomy algebra, given by $`\omega _{05}S(X^{05})=d\mathrm{ln}U^{\frac{1}{4}}\mathrm{\Gamma }^{05}`$ (see (46)).  We can go a little bit further; in the spinorial representation the generators of $`hol(G^{(11)})`$ take the form

$`S_1^{()}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{13}(\mathrm{\Gamma }_{12}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{34}),S_2^{()}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{23}(\mathrm{\Gamma }_{12}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{34}),S_3^{()}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(\mathrm{\Gamma }_{12}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{34})`$ (84)
$`S_{}^1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(\mathrm{\Gamma }_{35}+i\mathrm{\Gamma }_{45})(1+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{05}),\overline{S}_{}^1={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(\mathrm{\Gamma }_{35}i\mathrm{\Gamma }_{45})(1+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{05})`$ (85)
$`S_{}^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(\mathrm{\Gamma }_{15}+i\mathrm{\Gamma }_{25})(1+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{05}),\overline{S}_{}^2={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(\mathrm{\Gamma }_{15}i\mathrm{\Gamma }_{25})(1+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{05})`$ (86)
From here it is clear that first and second conditions in (83) are equivalent to ask for the trivial action of the abelian and $`su(2)`$ subalgebras respectively on the space of spinors; we conclude that there exist exactly eight singlets under the full holonomy algebra. If w.r.t. the Cartan subalgebra $`\{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{05},i\mathrm{\Gamma }_{12},i\mathrm{\Gamma }_{34},i\mathrm{\Gamma }_{67},i\mathrm{\Gamma }_{89}\}`$ we label a basis by $`(s_0,s_1,\mathrm{},s_4)`$, $`s_i=0,1`$ (see i.e. Appendix of  for details), they are simply given by $`(0s_2s_2s_3s_4)`$.

## 5 Discussion

First let us note that the supersymmetry of the supergravity supertube solution does not depend on any relation between the $`D0`$ and $`F1`$ charge densities, what enables us to assign arbitrary values to them.

While the original supertube had zero $`D2`$ charge, the final ten dimensional configuration (27) is a genuine $`D6`$-brane, its charge being traced to the initial $`D0`$ brane density,

$$q_{D6}_{S^2}_{\mathit{10}}F_\mathit{8}=_{S^2}F_\mathit{2}=_{S^2}_\mathit{3}dV=_{B_3,B_3=S^2}d_\mathit{3}𝑑V=_𝒞𝑑\sigma |B(\sigma )|$$
(87)
Of course for $`U=1,\stackrel{}{A}=\stackrel{}{0}`$ (which means $`|\pi (\sigma )|=0`$ on a flat $`D2`$-brane) we recover the standard flat $`\frac{1}{2}`$-supersymmetric $`D6`$-brane solution.

When uplifted to eleven dimensions, the resulting configuration (31) can be interpreted as a bound state of a Taub-NUT like space and pp-wave. The presence of the first can be verified by direct inspection of the metric, while that of the second follows from the existence of the covariantly constant null vector $`_{}`$. This assertion is consistent with the analysis of the Killing spinors since the constraints (83) are those corresponding to a Taub-NUT and a pp-wave supersymmetry preserving conditions .

For $`U=1,\stackrel{}{A}=\stackrel{}{0}`$ we have the product of Minkowski space in $`1+6`$ dimensions and a Taub-NUT space, i.e. M-theory compactified on this last one which is known to preserve $`\frac{1}{2}`$ of the supersymmetries and to have $`SU(2)G_2`$ holonomy. Since in our general $`\frac{1}{4}`$-supersymmetric case the irreducible part of the metric is six dimensional one could expect to find a $`Hol(ds_{1,5}^2)SU(3)`$ reduced holonomy group, but the pseudo-Riemannian character of $`ds_{1,5}^2`$ invalidates Berger’s classification theorem  and the resulting manifold is not a Calabi-Yau one777 At the time of writing we have no knowledge about a classification of holonomy groups of pseudo-riemannian manifolds. . In fact, from (78) the holonomy group is non semisimple and locally isomorphic to the semidirect product of $`SU(2)`$ and an the real section defined in (76) of the Abelian four-dimensional algebra generated by $`\{t_{}^\alpha ,\overline{t}_{}^\alpha \}`$ transforming in the $`\frac{1}{2}\overline{\frac{1}{2}}`$.

## 6 Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Carlos Núñez for an enlightening discussion.


text:
# References

SEARCHING FOR A CONNECTION BETWEEN

MATROID THEORY AND STRING THEORY

J. A. Nieto111nieto@uas.uasnet.mx

Departamento de Investigación en Física de la Universidad de Sonora,

83190, Hermosillo Sonora, México

and

Facultad de Ciencias Físico-Matemáticas de la Universidad Autónoma

de Sinaloa, 80010, Culiacán Sinaloa, México

Abstract

We make a number of observations about matter-ghost string phase, which may eventually lead to a formal connection between matroid theory and string theory. In particular, in order to take advantage of the already established connection between matroid theory and Chern-Simons theory, we propose a generalization of string theory in terms of some kind of Kahler metric. We show that this generalization is closely related to the Kahler-Chern-Simons action due to Nair and Schiff. In addition, we discuss matroid/string connection via matroid bundles and a Schild type action, and we add new information about the relationship between matroid theory, $`D=11`$ supergravity and Chern-Simons formalism.

Pacs numbers: 04.60.-m, 04.65.+e, 11.15.-q, 11.30.Ly

May, 2003

1. INTRODUCTION

Although the key principle in M-theory1-3 and string theory4 is unknown there is accumulating evidence for the existence of some kind of duality principle. In fact, duality is the key physical concept that relates the five known superstring theories in 9+1 dimensions (i.e., nine space and one time), Type I, Type IIA, Type IIB, Heterotic SO(32) and Heterotic $`E_8\times E_8`$, which may now be understood as different manifestations of M-theory. Thus, anticipating the possibility that duality is the basic principle in M-theory, one may be interested in the mathematical structure necessary to make sense of such a duality principle. The idea is similar to the role played by tensor analysis which gives a mathematical sense to the postulate of relativity “the laws of physics are the same for every observer”. In two previous works we proposed the possibility that such a mathematical structure could be realized through the so called matroid theory.5 Matroid theory, which can be understood as a generalization of graph theory and matrix theory, has the duality symmetry among its key basic concepts. In fact, in contrast to graphs in which duality can only be considered in connection with planar graphs, matroid theory has the remarkable property that every matroid has a unique dual matroid. As an example of the importance of the duality property in matroid theory let us just mention a theorem due to Whitney5: if $`M_1,..,M_p`$ and $`M_1^{^{}},..,M_p^{^{}}`$ are the components (blocks) of the matroids $`M`$ and $`M^{}`$ respectively, and if $`M_i^{^{}}`$ is the dual of $`M_i`$ ($`i=1,\mathrm{},p`$) then $`M^{}`$ is dual of $`M`$ and conversely, if $`M`$ and $`M^{}`$ are dual matroids then $`M_i^{^{}}`$ is dual of $`M_i.`$ Moreover, in a general context, we have the remarkable proposition that if a statement $`\mu `$ in the theory of matroids has been proved true, then also its dual $`\mu ^{}`$ is true.

Of course, the question is how to achieve such a relationship between matroid theory and M-theory. Especially if we do not even know the formal partition function associated to M-theory. As a first step in this direction, one may attempt to see if matroid theory is linked somehow to $`D=11`$ supergravity which is one of the manifestations of M-theory. In fact, it has been shown6 that the Fano matroid and its dual are closely related to Englert’s compactification7 of $`D=11`$ supergravity. This result is physically interesting because it allows a connection between the fundamental Fano matroid or its dual8 and octonions which, at the same time, are one of the alternative division algebras.9 In reference 10, we made further progress on this program, incorporating matroid theory on quantum Yang-Mills theory in the context of Chern-Simons action. Our mechanism was based on a theorem due to Thistlethwaite11 which connects the Jones polynomial for alternating knots with the Tutte polynomial for graphs. Since Witten12 showed that Jones polynomial can be understood in three dimensional terms through a Chern-Simons formalism, it became evident that we achieved a bridge between matroid theory and Chern-Simons formalism.

In this article, we further pursue the idea of relating matroid theory with M-theory. Since the five fundamental strings are different vacuum limits of M-theory, it seems natural to try to find first a link between matroid theory and string theory. In this context there are a number of observations that indicate that this idea makes sense. First, since Chern-Simons formalism is closely linked to conformal field theory and Matrix theory, which in turn are related to string theory, one should expect a connection of the form: matroid-theory$``$Chern-Simons-theory$``$string-theory. Second, since strings are closely related to knots, which in turn are related in one to one correspondence to signed graphs, one should expect a link of the form: matroids$``$signed graphs$``$knots$``$strings. Finally, we can in effect combine the two previous observations in the form: matroids$``$signed graphs$``$knots$``$Chern-Simons-formalism$``$strings.

In order to achieve our goal, we study the possibility that, in the string phase of matter-ghost coupling, the world sheet metric and the target space-time metric become unified in just one metric. We show, in some detail, that such a unified metric may be a certain kind of Kahler metric. This observation lead us to consider the Kahler-Chern-Simons action as the key bridge to connect matroid theory and string theory.

An alternative matroid/string connection can be achieved via the Schild type action.13 In fact, we show that writing the Nambu-Goto action in the context of Schild formulation, such a connection seems to be a straightforward extension of the chirotope notion of oriented matroids. We prove that a local description of the chirotope concept becomes part of the structure of the Schild action. The relevant structure in this process is the concept of matroid bundle which has already been developed by the mathematicians.14-17 Finally, we show that in order to complete the desired connection between matroids and strings it appears necessary to use the Chern-Simons formulation for strings as proposed by Zaikov18.

The plan of this work is as follows. In section 2, we briefly review matroid theory. In section 3, we closely follow the Ref. 6 adding new information about the connection between matroid theory and $`D=11`$ supergravity . In section 4, we briefly review Ref. 10 and propose a possible extension of the relation between matroid theory and Witten’s partition function for knots. In section 5, we propose a generalized Polyakov string action with the property of unifying the world-sheet metric and the target space-time metric. In section 6, we discuss an alternative matroid/string connection via the concept of a chirotope of oriented matroids and Schild type action. Finally, in section 7, we make some final comments.

2. A BRIEF REVIEW OF MATROID THEORY

At present matroid theory, also called combinatorial geometry or pregeometry, can be understood as the combinatorial analogue of K-theory. In fact, the axioms of K-theory are very similar to the properties achieved with the Tutte-Gotendiek invariants for matroids. This interpretation emerged from a great number of contributions from a several mathematicians since 1935 with the pioneer work of Whitney5 on ”Abstract properties of linear dependence”. In the same year, Birkhoff19 established the connection between simple matroids and geometric lattices. In 1936, MacLane20 gave an interpretation of matroids in terms of projective geometry. And an important progress to the subject was given in 1958 by Tutte8 who introduced the concept of homotopy for matroids. The fascination of this subject among the combinatorial mathematicians can be appreciated from the large body of information about matroid theory. In fact, there is a large number of books about matroid theory. For background information on this subject the reader should consult Oxley21 and Welsh.22 We also recommend the books of Wilson,23 Kung24 and Ribnikov.25

It is known that in graph theory only planar graphs have an associated dual graph. For instance, the Kuratowski theorem assures that the complete graph $`K_5`$ and the bipartita graph $`K_{3,3}`$ which are not planar do not have an associated dual graph. In a sense, matroid theory arose as an attempt to solve this lack of duality symmetry. The attractive feature is that in matroid theory every matroid has an associated unique dual matroid. In particular the matroid associated to $`K_5`$, let us say $`M(K_5),`$ has a dual $`M^{}(K_5)`$. The important aspect is that $`M^{}(K_5)`$ is not graphic, that is, it can not be represented by a graph. This is, of course, an indication that matroid theory is a generalization of graph theory. Therefore, the great advantage of matroid theory is that it provides us with a mathematical structure in which the concepts of duality of planar graphs is extended to graphs that are not planar.

Another interesting aspect that motivates the subject is that linear dependence in algebra can be understood as a particular case of matroid theory. In fact, matroid theory leads to matroids that are not even representable by a finite set of vectors in a vector space or by matrices, extending the concept of orthogonality in vector spaces. Summarizing, we can say that by extending the concept of duality in vector spaces and planar graphs, matroid theory accomplishes a generalization of both graph theory and matrix theory.

Mathematically, a matroid is defined as follows: a matroid $`M`$ is a pair $`(E,I)`$, where $`E,`$ called the ground set, is a non-empty finite set, and $`I`$ is a non-empty collection of subsets of $`E`$ satisfying the following two properties:

$`(I`$ $`i)`$ any subset of an independent set is independent.

$`(I\mathrm{𝑖𝑖})`$ if $`K`$ and $`J`$ are independent sets with $`K`$ $`J`$, then there is an element $`e`$ contained in $`J`$ but not in $`K`$, such that $`K\{e\}`$ is independent.

Members of $`I`$ are called independent sets of $`M`$; other sets are called dependent. Therefore, the definition itself of a matroid divides all possible subsets of $`E`$ in two types: independent and dependent subsets. Thus, we see that, even from the beginning, matroids have the dual structure independent-dependent. From this point of view, it is not a surprise to find eventually that every matroid has an associated dual matroid.

A base is defined to be any maximal independent set. Similarly, the minimal dependent set is called a circuit. By repeatedly using the property $`(I\mathrm{𝑖𝑖})`$ it is straightforward to show that any two bases have the same number of elements.

An alternative definition of a matroid in terms of bases is as follows:

A matroid $`M`$ is a pair $`(E,)`$, where $`E`$ is a non-empty finite set and $``$ is a non-empty collection of subsets of $`E`$ (called bases) satisfying the following properties:

$`(`$ $`i)`$ no base properly contains another base;

$`(`$ $`\mathrm{𝑖𝑖})`$ if $`B_1`$ and $`B_2`$ are bases and if $`b`$ is any element of $`B_1,`$ then there is an element $`g`$ of $`B_2`$ with the property that $`(B_1\{b\})\{g\}`$ is also a base.

A matroid can also be defined in terms of circuits:

A matroid $`M`$ is a pair $`(E`$, $`C)`$, where $`E`$ is a non-empty finite set, and $`C`$ is a non-empty collection of subsets of $`E`$ (called circuits) satisfying the following properties.

$`(C`$ $`i)`$ no circuit properly contains another circuit;

$`(C`$ $`\mathrm{𝑖𝑖})`$ if $`C_1`$ and $`C_2`$ are two distinct circuits each containing an element $`c`$, then there exists a circuit in $`C_1C_2`$ which does not contain $`c`$.

If we start with any of the three definitions then one finds that the other two follow as theorems. For example, it is possible to prove that $`(I)`$ implies $`()`$ and $`(C)`$. In other words, these three definitions are equivalent. There are other definitions also equivalent to these three, but for the purpose of this work it is not necessary to consider all of them.

As we noticed previously, even from the initial structure of a matroid theory we find relations such as independent-dependent structure which suggests duality. The dual of $`M`$, denoted by $`M^{},`$ is defined as a pair $`(E,^{}),`$ where $`^{}`$ is a non-empty collection of subsets of $`E`$ formed with the complements of the bases of $`M`$. An immediate consequence of this definition is that every matroid has a dual and this dual is unique. It also follows that the double-dual $`M^{}`$ is equal to $`M`$. Moreover, if $`S`$ is a subset of $`E`$, then the size of the largest independent set contained in $`S`$ is called the rank of $`S`$ and is denoted by $`\rho (S)`$. If $`M=M_1+M_2`$ and $`\rho (M)=\rho (M_1)+\rho (M_2)`$ we shall say that $`M`$ is separable. Any maximal non-separable part of $`M`$ is a block of $`M`$. An important theorem due to Whitney5 is that if $`M_1,..,M_p`$ and $`M_1^{^{}},..,M_p^{^{}}`$ are the blocks of the matroids $`M`$ and $`M^{}`$ respectively, and if $`M_i^{^{}}`$ is the dual of $`M_i`$ $`(i=1,\mathrm{},p)`$. Then $`M^{}`$ is dual of $`M`$. Conversely, let $`M`$ and $`M^{}`$ be dual matroids, and let $`M_1,..,M_p`$ be blocks of $`M`$. Let $`M_1^{^{}},..,M_p^{^{}}`$ be the corresponding submatroids of $`M^{}`$. Then $`M_1^{^{}},..,M_p^{^{}}`$ are the blocks of $`M^{}`$, and $`M_i^{^{}}`$ is dual of $`M_i.`$

Over the last years matroid theory has been growing very rapidly. There are already well established formalisms for oriented matroids26 and bias matroids.27 The former can be understood as a generalization of oriented graphs and the latter as an extension of signed graphs. In each one of these branches of matroid theory there are very interesting theorems and results, some of which we shall mention in the next sections.

3. MATROID THEORY AND SUPERGRAVITY

Here, we briefly review the main results of Ref. 6 and add some new observations. In Ref. 6 we showed that the Fano matroid $`F_7`$may be connected with octonions which, in turn, are related to the Englert’s compactification of $`D=11`$ supergravity.

A Fano matroid $`F_7`$ is the matroid defined on the ground set

$$E=\{1,2,3,4,5,6,7\}$$
(1)
whose bases are all those subsets of $`E`$ with three elements except $`f_1=\{1,2,3\},`$ $`f_2=\{5,1,6\},`$ $`f_3=\{6,4,2\},`$ $`f_4=\{4,3,5\},`$ $`f_5=\{4,7,1\},`$ $`f_6=\{6,7,3\}`$ and $`f_7=\{5,7,2\}`$. The circuits of the Fano matroid are precisely these subsets and its complements. It follows that these circuits define the dual $`F_7^{}`$ of the Fano matroid.

Let us write the set $`E`$ in the form $`E`$=$`\{e_1,e_2,e_{3,}e_{4,}e_5,e_6,e_7\}`$. Thus, the subsets used to define the Fano matroid now become $`f_1=\{e_1,e_2,e_3\}`$, $`f_2=\{e_5,e_1,e_6\}`$, $`f_3=\{e_6,e_4,e_2\}`$, $`f_4=\{e_4,e_3,e_5\}`$, $`f_5=\{e_4,e_7,e_1\}`$, $`f_6=\{e_6,e_7,e_3\}`$ and $`f_7=\{e_5,e_7,e_2\}`$. The key idea in Ref. 6 was to identify the quantities $`e_i,`$ where $`i=1,\mathrm{}`$,$`7,`$ with the octonionic imaginary units. Specifically, we write an octonion $`q`$ in the form

$$q=q_0e_0+q_1e_1+q_2e_2+q_3e_3+q_4e_4+q_5e_5+q_6e_6+q_7e_7,$$

where $`q_0`$ and $`q_i`$ are real numbers. Here, $`e_0`$ denotes the identity. The product of two octonions can be obtained from the formula:

$$e_ie_j=\delta _{ij}+\psi _{ij}^ke_k,$$
(2)
where $`\delta _{ij}`$ is the Kronecker delta and $`\psi _{ijk}=`$ $`\psi _{ij}^l\delta _{lk}`$ is the fully antisymmetric structure constants, with $`i,j,k=1,\mathrm{},7`$. By taking the $`\psi _{ijk}`$ equals $`1`$ or $`1`$ for each one of the seven combinations $`f_i`$ we may derive all the values of $`\psi _{ijk}`$.

The octonion (Cayley) algebra is not associative, but alternative. This means that the basic associator of any three imaginary units is

$$e_i,e_j,e_k=(e_ie_j)e_ke_i(e_je_k)=\phi _{ijkm}e_m,$$
(3)
where $`\phi _{ijkl}`$ is a fully antisymmetric four index tensor. It turns out that $`\phi _{ijkl}`$ and $`\psi _{ijk}`$ are related by the expression

$$\phi _{ijkl}=(1/3!)ϵ_{ijklmnr}\psi _{mnr},$$
(4)
where $`ϵ_{ijklmnr}`$ is the completely antisymmetric Levi-Civita tensor, with $`ϵ_{12\mathrm{}7}=1`$. It is interesting to observe that given the numerical values $`f_i`$ for the indices of $`\psi _{mnr}`$ and using (4) we get the other seven subsets of $`E`$ with four elements of the dual Fano matroid $`F_7^{}.`$ For instance, if we take $`f_1`$ then we have $`\psi _{123}`$ and (4) gives $`\phi _{4567}`$ which leads to the circuit subset $`\{4,5,6,7\}`$ of $`F_7^{}.`$

Therefore, this shows that the Fano matroid and its dual are closely related to octonions which at the same time are an essential part of the Englert’s solution of absolute parallelism on $`S^7`$ of $`D=11`$ supergravity. It is important to mention that the Fano matroid is the only minimal binary irregular matroid. Just as octonions are central mathematical objects in division algebras, this property makes the Fano matroid a central mathematical object in matroid theory. $`D=11`$ supergravity is on the other hand an important physical structure in M-theory. Therefore we have here a link between three apparently unrelated important objects in its own field: Fano matroid (matroid theory) $``$octonions (algebra) $`D=11`$ supergravity (unify fundamental physics).

We would like to make some further observations about the link between the Fano matroid and octonions. Consider the subsets $`h_1=\{v_1,v_2,v_3\}`$, $`h_2=\{v_5,v_1,v_6\}`$, $`h_3=\{v_6,v_2,v_4\}`$, $`h_4=\{v_4,v_3,v_5\}`$, $`h_5=\{v_4,v_7,v_1\}`$, $`h_6=\{v_6,v_7,v_3\}`$ and $`h_7=\{v_5,v_7,v_2\}.`$ If we identify $`v_i,`$ where $`i=1,\mathrm{}`$,$`7,`$ of these subsets with the columns of the matrix

$$A=\left(\begin{array}{ccccccc}1& 0& 1& 0& 1& 0& 1\\ 1& 1& 0& 0& 0& 1& 1\\ 0& 1& 1& 1& 0& 0& 1\end{array}\right),$$
(5)
we notice that the matrix $`A`$ provides a representation (or realization) of the Fano matroid $`F_7`$. Now, suppose that the Fano matroid is extended to a structure in which the sets $`\{v_i,v_j,v_k\}`$ corresponding to the $`h_i`$ are replaced by the completely antisymmetric object

$$(v_i,v_j,v_k)=(v_i,v_k,v_j)=(v_j,v_i,v_k).$$
(6)
For instance, we may replace $`h_1=\{v_1,v_2,v_3\}`$ by $`\widehat{h}_1=(v_1,v_2,v_3)`$. Specifically, we define the extended Fano matroid $`\widehat{F}_7`$ as the pair $`(E,\widehat{})`$ in which $`\widehat{}`$ is the set of three elements $`(v_i,v_j,v_k)`$ except the completely antisymmetric quantities $`\widehat{h}_1=(v_1,v_2,v_3)`$, $`\widehat{h}_2=(v_5,v_1,v_6)`$, $`\widehat{h}_3=(v_6,v_2,v_4)`$, $`\widehat{h}_4=(v_4,v_3,v_5)`$, $`\widehat{h}_5=(v_4,v_7,v_1),`$ $`\widehat{h}_6=(v_6,v_7,v_3)`$ and $`\widehat{h}_7=(v_5,v_7,v_2)`$. The generalization from $`F_7`$ to $`\widehat{F}_7`$ is very similar to the transition from graphs to digraphs (or oriented graphs) in which the edges of the original graph, let us say $`\{a,b\},`$ are changed to an ordering set, $`(a,b)=(b,a)`$. The important point is that if there exists such a transition between $`F_7`$ and $`\widehat{F}_7`$ then we discover that $`\widehat{F}_7`$ almost determine completely the octonion algebra, essentially because $`(v_i,v_j,v_k)`$ for the different $`h_i`$ become closely related to the structure constants $`\psi _{mnr}`$ associated to octonions. In fact, there is an extension of matroid theory which seems to be what these observations suggest for the Fano matroid, namely oriented matroids.26

In order to define oriented matroids it is necessary to define first what signed circuits are. A signed circuit $`X`$ is a circuit with the partition $`(X^+,X^{})`$ into two sets: $`X^+`$ the set of positive elements of $`X`$, and $`X^{}`$ its set of negative elements.

An oriented matroid $``$ is a pair $`(E,𝒞)`$, where $`E`$ is a non-empty finite set, and $`𝒞`$ is a non-empty collection of subsets of $`E`$ (called signed circuits) satisfying the following properties.

($`𝒞`$ i) no circuit properly contains another circuit.

($`𝒞`$ ii) if $`𝒞_1`$ and $`𝒞_2`$ are two distinct signed circuits, $`𝒞_1`$-$`𝒞_2,`$ and $`c𝒞_1^+𝒞_2^{}`$ then there exists a third circuit $`𝒞_3𝒞`$ with $`𝒞_3^+(𝒞_1^+𝒞_2^+)\{c\}`$ and $`𝒞_3^{}(𝒞_1^{}𝒞_2^{})\{c\}.`$

It is not difficult to see that by forgetting signs, this definition of oriented matroids reduces to the definition of ordinary (non-oriented) matroids.

An alternative but equivalent way to define an oriented matroid is as follows: An oriented matroid $``$ is a pair $`(E,\chi ),`$ where $`E`$ is a non-empty finite set and $`\chi `$ (called chirotope) is a mapping $`E^r\{1,0,1\},`$ with $`r`$ the rank on $`E,`$ satisfying the following properties.

$`(\chi i)`$ $`\chi `$ is not identically zero

$`(\chi ii)\chi `$ is alternating

$`(\chi iii)`$ for all $`x_1,x_2,\mathrm{},x_r`$ and $`y_1,y_2,\mathrm{},y_r`$ such that

$$\chi (x_1,x_2,\mathrm{},x_r)\chi (y_1,y_2,\mathrm{},y_r)0$$
(7)
there exists an $`i\{1,2,3,4,5,6,7\}`$ such that

$$\chi (y_i,x_2,\mathrm{},x_r)\chi (y_1,y_2,\mathrm{},y_{i1},x_1,y_{i+1,}\mathrm{},y_r)=\chi (x_1,x_2,\mathrm{},x_r)\chi (y_1,y_2,\mathrm{},y_r).$$
(8)
For a vector configuration $`\chi `$ can be identified as

$$\chi (i_1,\mathrm{},i_r)signdet(v_{i_1},\mathrm{},v_{i_r})\{1,0,1\}$$
(9)
and $`(\chi iii)`$ turns out to be related to the Grassmann-Plucker relation.

Returning to the case of the Fano matroid it is tempting to identify $`h_i`$ with the chirotope

$$\chi (i_1,i_2,i_3)=signdet(v_{i_1},v_{i_2},v_{i_3}).$$
(10)
But, in Ref. 28 it is noted that the Fano matroid is not orientable. Specifically, one can verify that the Fano matroid does not satisfy the property $`(\chi iii)`$. Nevertheless, it is interesting to observe that one may write the formula29

$$\psi _{i_1i_2i_3}+\chi (i_1,i_2,i_3)=C_{i_1i_2i_3},$$
(11)
where $`C_{i_1i_2i_3}\{1,1\}`$ may be identified with the uniform matroid $`U_{3,7}`$ which is an excluded minor for $`GF(5)`$-representability, where $`GF(q)`$ denotes a finite field of order $`q.`$ In this sense the Fano matroid and the octonions look as complementary concepts of the oriented uniform matroid $`M(U_{3,7})`$ structure.

It is worth remarking that the structure of $`\widehat{F}_7`$ not necessarily corresponds, in a straightforward way, to oriented matroids for the following observations. An important problem in matroid theory is to see which matroids can be mapped into a set of vectors in a vector space over a given field. When such a map exists we are speaking about a coordinatization (or representation) of the matroid over the field. A matroid which has a coordinatization over $`GF(2)`$ is called binary. Furthermore, a matroid which has a coordinatization over every field is called regular. It turns out that regular matroids are of fundamental importance in matroid theory, among other things, because they play a similar role as planar graphs in graph theory.23 It is known that a graph is planar if and only if it contains no subgraph homeomorphic to $`K_5`$ or $`K_{3,3}`$. The analogue of this theorem for matroids was proved by Tutte.8 In fact, Tutte proved that a matroid is regular if and only if it is binary and has no minor isomorphic to the Fano matroid or the dual of this.

The important point is that an algebra, like the octonion algebra, is a vector space with an additional multiplicative operation. If it could be possible to identify this additional product with a kind of rule for the bases of $``$ in a given matroid then we could speak about a representation of a matroid (with this additional product) in terms of an algebra instead of just the corresponding vector space. At present, we have not been able to find in the literature this kind of structure for matroids. But it seems to us that our identification of $`\widehat{F}_7`$ with octonions may provide an example of matroids associated with an algebra rather than with just the corresponding vector space.

4. MATROID THEORY AND CHERN-SIMONS THEORY

Here, we shall briefly review the main results of Ref. 10 about the connection between matroid theory and Chern-Simons theory and make additional comments. For this purpose let us introduce the Witten’s partition function

$$Z(L,k)=DA\mathrm{exp}(S_{cs})\underset{r=1}{\overset{n}{}}W(L_r,\rho _r),$$
(12)
where $`S_{CS}`$ is the Chern-Simons action

$$S_{CS}=\frac{k}{2\pi }_{M^3}Tr(AdA+\frac{2}{3}AAA),$$
(13)
and $`W(C_i,\rho _i)`$ is the Wilson line

$$W(L_r,\rho _r)=Tr_{\rho _r}P\mathrm{exp}(\underset{L_r}{}A_i^aT_a𝑑x^i).$$
(14)
Here, $`A=A_i^aT_adx^i`$, with $`T_a`$ the generators of the Lie algebra of $`G`$ and the symbol $`P`$ means the path-ordering along the knots $`L_r.`$ If we choose $`M^3=S^3,`$ $`G=SU(2)`$ and $`\rho _r=C^2`$ for all the link components then the Witten’s partition function (12) reproduces the Jones polynomial

$$Z(L,k)=V_L(t),$$
(15)
where

$$t=e^{\frac{2\pi i}{k}}$$
(16)
and $`V_L(t)`$ denotes the Jones polynomial satisfying the skein relation;

$$t^1V_{L_+}tV_L_{}=(\sqrt{t}\frac{1}{\sqrt{t}})V_{L_0},$$
(17)
where $`L_+,L_{}`$ and $`L_0`$ are the standard notation for overcrossing, undercrossing and zero crossing.

On the other hand, Thistlethwaite11 showed that if $`L`$ is an alternating link and $`G(L)`$ the corresponding planar graph, then the Jones polynomial $`V_L(t)`$ is equal to the Tutte polynomial $`T_G(t,t^1)`$ up to a sign and a factor power of $`t.`$ Specifically, we have

$$V_L(t)=(t^{\frac{3}{4}})^{w(L)}t^{\frac{(\rho n)}{4}}T_G(t,t^1),$$
(18)
where $`w(L)`$ is the writhe and $`\rho `$ and $`n`$ are the rank and the nullity of $`G,`$ respectively. Here, $`V_L(t)`$ is the Jones polynomial of alternating link $`L.`$ The Tutte polynomial associated to each graph $`G`$ is a polynomial $`T_G(x,x^1)`$ with the property that if $`G`$ is composed solely of isthmus and loops then $`T_G(x,x^1)=x^Ix^l,`$ where $`I`$ is the number of isthmuses and $`l`$ is the number of loops. The polynomial $`T_G`$ satisfies the skein relation

$$T_G=T_G^{^{}}+T_{G^{^{\prime \prime }}},$$
(19)
where $`G^{}`$ and $`G^{\prime \prime }`$ are obtained by delating and contracting respectively an edge that is neither a loop nor an isthmus of $`G`$.

On the other hand, a theorem due to Tutte allows to compute $`T_G(t,t^1)`$ from the maximal trees of $`G`$. In fact, Tutte proved that if $``$ denotes the set of maximal trees in a graph $`G`$, $`i()`$ denotes the number of internally active edges in $`G,`$ and $`e(B)`$ refers to the number of the externally active edges in $`G`$ (with respect to a given maximal tree $`B`$) then the Tutte polynomial is given by the formula

$$T_G(t,t^1)=\underset{B}{}x^{i(B)}x^{e(B)},$$
(20)
where the sum is over all elements of $``$.

The important point is that the Tutte polynomial $`T_G(t,t^1)`$ computed according to (20) uses the concept of a graphic matroid $`M(G)`$ defined as the pair $`(E,)`$, where $`E`$ is the set of edges of $`G`$. This remarkable connection between the Tutte polynomial and a matroid allows in fact a relation between the partition function $`Z(L,k)`$ given in (12) and matroid theory. This is because according to (18) the Tutte polynomial $`T_G(t,t^1)`$ is related to the Jones polynomial $`V_L(t)`$ which in turn according to (15) is connected to the partition function $`Z(L,k)`$. Specifically, for $`M^3=S^3,`$ $`G=SU(2)`$, $`\rho _r=C^2`$ for all alternating link components of $`L`$, we have the relation

$$Z(L,k)=V_L(t)=(t^{\frac{3}{4}})^{w(L)}t^{\frac{(\rho n)}{4}}T_G(t,t^1).$$
(21)
Thus, the matroid $`(E,)`$ used to compute $`T_G(t,t^1)`$ can be associated not only to $`V_L(t),`$ but also to $`Z(L,k).`$ Therefore, we have found a bridge which links the matroid formalism $`(E,)`$ and the partition function $`Z(L,k).`$ This may allow to bring many concepts of matroid theory to fundamental physics and conversely, different results in fundamental physics may be used as an inspiration to further develop matroid theory. As an example of the former remark let us just mention how the duality concept in matroid theory can be used as a symmetry of $`Z(L,k).`$

First of all, it is known that in matroid theory the concept of duality is of fundamental importance. For example, there is a remarkable theorem that assures that every matroid has a dual. So, the question arises about what are the implications of this theorem in Chern-Simons formalism. In order to address this question let us first make a change of notation $`T_G(t,t^1)T_{M(G)}(t)`$ and $`Z(L,k)Z_{M(G)}(k).`$ The idea of this notation is to emphasize the connection between matroid theory, Tutte polynomial and Chern- Simons partition function. Consider the planar dual graph $`G^{}`$ of $`G`$. In matroid theory we have $`M(G^{})`$ =$`M^{}(G)`$. Therefore, the duality property of the Tutte polynomial

$$T_G(t,t^1)=T_G^{}(t^1,t)$$
(22)
can be expressed as

$$T_{M(G)}(t)=T_{M^{}(G)}(t^1)$$
(23)
and consequently from (15) and (18) we discover that for the partition function $`Z_{M(G)}(k)`$ we should have the dual property

$$Z_{M(G)}(k)=Z_{M^{}(G)}(k).$$
(24)
As a second example let us first mention another theorem due to Withney:5 If $`M_1,..,M_p`$ and $`M_1^{^{}},..,M_p^{^{}}`$ are the components (or blocks) of the matroids $`M`$ and $`M^{}`$ respectively, and if $`M_i^{^{}}`$ is the dual of $`M_i`$ $`(i=1,\mathrm{},p)`$. Then $`M^{}`$ is dual of $`M`$. Conversely, let $`M`$ and $`M^{}`$ be dual matroids, and let $`M_1,..,M_p`$ be components of $`M`$. Let $`M_1^{^{}},..,M_p^{^{}}`$ be the corresponding submatroids of $`M^{}`$. Then $`M_1^{^{}},..,M_p^{^{}}`$ are the components of $`M^{}`$, and $`M_i^{^{}}`$ is dual of $`M_i.`$ Thus, according to (24) we find that

$$Z_{M_i(G_i)}(k)=Z_{M_i^{}(G_i)}(k)$$
(25)
if and only if

$$Z_{M(G)}(k)=Z_{M^{}(G)}(k),$$
(26)
where $`G_i`$ are the components or blocks of $`G.`$

Our discussion has been, so far, based on alternating links $`L.`$ This kind of links is an important, but relatively small subclass of links. In fact, there is a one to one correspondence between links and signed graphs and a link is alternating if the signed graph representation has all edges with the same sign. Therefore, in order to generalize the procedure it turns necessary to have a generalized Thustlethwaite’s 11 theorem for any signed graph not just for those of the same sign. Fortunately, Thustlethwaite himself,11 and later Kauffman,30 precisely generalized the original Thustlethwaite’s theorem for planar unsigned graphs.

Theorem: Let $`G`$ be a planar signed graph. Let $`K(G)`$ be the knot/link diagram corresponding to $`G`$. Then $`K(G)=T_G(A,B,x,y)`$. The bracket polynomial for knots and links is a specialization of the generalized Tutte polynomial for signed graphs.

Here, $`A,B,`$and $`d`$ are commuting variables associated to the link. $`A`$ and $`B`$ correspond to $`A`$-channel, $`B`$-channel respectively, while the parameter $`d`$ is used as a factor of normalization in order to make $`T_G(A,B,d)`$ invariant under the Reidemeister moves II and III.

Furthermore, Kauffman showed that $`T_G=T_G(A,B,x,y)`$ has a spanning tree expansion of the form

$$T_G=\underset{H}{}\mathrm{\Lambda }(H),$$
(27)
where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }(H)`$ denotes the product of the contribution of the edges of $`G`$ relative activities of the maximal trees $`H`$ in $`G`$.

In principle, since up to a normalized factor, measuring the orientability of the link, $`K(G)CS,`$ in order to find a generalization of our procedure we need to relate $`T_G`$ with matroid theory. A $`T_Gmatroids`$ connection is given by (27) in the sense that the sum is over all maximal trees $`H`$ in $`G`$. Notice, however, that the maximal trees $`H`$ are associated to the underlying graph (without signs) of the signed graph and not to the signed graph itself.

It is known that matroids associated to signed graphs are called bias matroids.27 It turns out that bias matroids are interesting by themselves, but unfortunately the subject about this kind of matroids has not been developed for our purpose and it appears that many of the interesting properties of ordinary matroids are lost. Nevertheless, the idea of writing $`T_G`$ as a sum over bias matroids seems interesting and deserves further study.

It may help to mention in this direction that Crapo31 proposed an alternative possibility to write $`T_G`$ as a sum over all spanning subsets of $`E,`$ rather than over maximal trees. This idea is motivated from the observation that in this case the rank function $`\rho `$ becomes an important concept and can be used to generalize $`T_G`$ to matroid theory. A generalization for signed graphs of the Crapo’s polynomial has been proposed by Murasugi32 and by Shwarzler and Welsh.33 Let us briefly mention these two polynomials.

Murasugi introduced the following polynomial. Let $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(r,s)`$ denote the set of all spanning subgraph $`S`$ of $`G.`$ Then $`T_G(x,y,z)`$ is defined by

$$T_G(x,y,z)=\underset{k,\rho }{}\left\{\underset{S\mathrm{\Gamma }(r,s)}{}x^{P(S)N(S)}\right\}y^{k(S)1}z^{S\rho (S)},$$
(28)
where $`P(S)`$ and $`N(S)`$ denote the number of positive and negative edges in $`S`$ respectively. It is interesting to note that $`\beta _0=k=r+1`$ and $`\beta _1=n=S\rho (S)`$, where $`n`$ is the nullity and $`\beta _i`$ denotes the $`i`$ Betti number of $`S`$ as a $`1`$complex. Although this polynomial uses the rank and the nullity concepts, the fact that the sum is over all spanning subgraphs $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ means that $`T_G(x,y,z)`$ is also applied only to the underlying unsigned graph $`G`$ associated to the signed graph. Furthermore, the Murasugi polynomial does not have a direct relation with the Kauffmann polynomial.

On the other hand, Shwarzler and Welsh33 proved that the Kauffmann polynomial associated to a link $`L`$ can be expressed in terms of the associated signed graph $`G(L)`$ as follows

$$T_G(A,B)=A^{E^{}E^+}(A^2A^2)^{\rho (G)}\underset{SE}{}A^{4(\rho (S)S^{})}B^{\rho (G)+S2\rho (S)},$$
(29)
where $`B=A^41`$ and for any subset $`SE(G)`$, $`S^+`$ and $`S^{}`$ denote the positive and negative signed part respectively. It is important to remark that Shwarzler and Welsh showed that (29) is a specialization of a more general polynomial for signed matroids. In fact, Shwarzler and Welsh proposed an eight variables polynomial which contains as specialization not only the Kauffman bracket polynomial but also the Tutte polynomial of a matroid, the partition function of the anisotropic Ising model and the Kauffman-Murasugi polynomial of signed graphs (for further details see Ref. 33).

5. MATROID THEORY AND STRING THEORY

In the literature,34-36 several attempts have been done to connect Chern-Simons formalism with string theory. One of the most interesting37 comes from the idea that at some level the decoupling of ghost and matter does not hold. In this case, matter fields and ghosts become mixed and the standard string theory should be replaced by some kind of topological string theory.38 It has been shown35 that some topological string theories perturbatively coincide with Chern-Simons theory. So, in this sense Chern-Simons theory is equivalent to topological string theory. However, the problem arises when it is attempted to relate Chern-Simons theory with fundamental strings. In fact it has been shown38 that in the pure Chern-Simons formalism there are not enough degrees of freedom to reproduce not only the induced gravity but the toroidal compactification of heterotic string.

These observations are, of course, important in order to find a matroid theory and string theory connection and eventually M-theory connection. In the previous section we explained a matroid theory-Chern-Simons theory relation via Tutte and Jones polynomials. It is clear then that what we should look for is some kind of generalization of fundamental strings which may provide the bridge between fundamental strings and topological strings.

The generalized fundamental strings could be the topological membrane39 itself , but this is likely to be reduced to the topological strings rather than to fundamental strings. Another possibility is the membrane theory or any other p-brane40, but it has been shown41 that through double dimensional reduction these are reduced to fundamental strings rather than to topological strings. So, although there is the hope that at some level 3D topological field theory may lead to fundamental strings, the correct formulation of such a theory is at present unknown.

In this section, we propose an alternative generalization of fundamental strings which seems closer to our purpose than the already known alternative of topological membranes or p-branes.

The idea comes from the observation that in the Polyakov type action the world sheet metric and the target space-time metrics are decoupled. But it seems natural to think that at a more fundamental level when ghost and matter fields are mixed the decoupling between such two metrics is no longer true. Therefore the desired generalization of string theory must be based on a unified metric of the world sheet and target space-time metrics.

Let us clarify these observations. For this purpose, let us first consider the Polyakov action

$$S=\frac{1}{2}d^2\xi \sqrt{g}g^{ab}(\xi )_ax^\mu _bx^\nu G_{\mu \nu }(x),$$
(30)
where $`g_{ab}(\xi )`$ and $`G_{\mu \nu }(x),`$ with $`\mu ,\nu =1,\mathrm{},D,`$ are the world sheet metric and the target space-time metric, respectively. We observe from (30) that the two metrics $`g_{ab}(\xi )`$ and $`G_{\mu \nu }(x)`$ play very different roles; $`g_{ab}(\xi )`$ determines the world sheet metric swept out by the string in its dynamical evolution, while $`G_{\mu \nu }(x)`$ determines the background metric where the string is moving. Therefore, classically $`g_{ab}(\xi )`$ and $`G_{\mu \nu }(x)`$ are unrelated. However, this is no longer true at the quantum level. For instance, it is well known that in a consistent quantum string theory $`g_{ab}(\xi )`$ plays an essential role to fix the size of the matrix $`G_{\mu \nu }(x)`$: $`D=26`$ in the bosonic case. This kind of relation between $`g_{ab}(\xi )`$ and $`G_{\mu \nu }(x)`$ is, however, in a certain sense superficial because in the critical dimension 26 matter fields decouple from the corresponding ghost with associated central charge $`c=26.`$ The important observation is that, as it was mentioned in the introduction, at a deeper level the decoupling between matter fields and ghost must be no longer true and therefore one should expect that in such a case there must be a unified framework for the two metrics $`g_{ab}(\xi )`$ and $`G_{\mu \nu }(x).`$

Consider the line element

$$ds^2=G_{(\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu })}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})dx^{\widehat{\mu }}dx^{\widehat{\nu }},$$
(31)
where the indices $`\widehat{\mu },`$ $`\widehat{\nu }`$ run from $`1`$ to $`2D`$, the symbol $``$ means tensor product and $`G_{(\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu })}=G_{(\widehat{\nu }\widehat{\mu })}`$. Suppose that (31) can be written as

$$ds^2=G_{(\mu \nu )}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})dx^\mu dx^\nu +G_{(\mu \nu )}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})dy^\mu dy^\nu .$$
(32)
Here, we assume that $`G_{(\mu A)}=G_{(A\mu )}=0,`$ with $`A=D+1,\mathrm{},2D`$ and we identify $`x^Ay^\mu `$ and $`G_{(AB)}G_{(\mu \nu )}.`$ It is not difficult to see that (32) can be rewritten as

$$ds^2=G_{(\mu \nu )}^{ab}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})dx_a^\mu dx_b^\nu ,$$
(33)
where $`x_1^\mu x^\mu `$ and $`x_2^\mu =y^\mu `$ and we assumed that $`G_{(\mu \nu )}^{11}=G_{(\mu \nu )}^{22}`$ and $`G_{(\mu \nu )}^{12}=G_{(\mu \nu )}^{21}=0.`$

On the other hand, if we use the definition

$$z^\mu =x^\mu +iy^\mu ,$$
(34)
we find that (32) can be written in the alternative way

$$ds^2=G_{(\mu \nu )}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})dz^\mu d\overline{z}^\nu .$$
(35)
In this scenario, since $`dx^{\widehat{\mu }}dx^{\widehat{\nu }}`$ is a second-rank symmetric tensor the same results follow if we consider the most general hermitian metric

$$G_{\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu }}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})=G_{(\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu })}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})+iG_{[\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu }]}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }}).$$
(36)
Here, $`G_{[\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu }]}`$ denotes an antisymmetric tensor metric. Of course, $`G_{\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu }}`$ in (36) satisfies the hermitian condition $`G_{\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu }}=G_{\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu }}^{}.`$

Now, consider the metric $`G_{\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu }}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})`$ given in (36), in connection with the exterior product

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=\frac{1}{2}G_{\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu }}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})dx^{\widehat{\mu }}dx^{\widehat{\nu }}.$$
(37)
Using the exterior product property $`dx^{\widehat{\mu }}dx^{\widehat{\nu }}=dx^{\widehat{\nu }}dx^{\widehat{\mu }},`$ we see that (37) leads to

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=\frac{i}{2}G_{[\widehat{\mu }\widehat{\nu }]}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})dx^{\widehat{\mu }}dx^{\widehat{\nu }}.$$
(38)
Assuming that $`G_{[\mu A]}=G_{[A\mu ]}=0`$ we find that (38) becomes

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=\frac{i}{2}G_{[\mu \nu ]}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})dx^\mu dx^\nu +\frac{i}{2}G_{[AB]}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})dy^Ady^B.$$
(39)
We again make the identification $`x^Ay^\mu `$ and $`G_{[AB]}G_{[\mu \nu ]}.`$ The formula (39) can be rewritten as

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=\frac{i}{2}G_{[\mu \nu ]}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})(dx^\mu dx^\nu +dy^\mu dy^\nu ).$$
(40)
Introducing $`x_1^\mu x^\mu `$ and $`x_2^\mu =y^\mu `$ and assuming that $`G_{[\mu \nu ]}^{12}=G_{[\mu \nu ]}^{21}=0`$ and $`G_{[\mu \nu ]}^{11}=G_{[\mu \nu ]}^{22}0`$ we find that (40) leads to

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=\frac{i}{2}G_{[\mu \nu ]}^{ab}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})dx_a^\mu dx_b^\nu .$$
(41)
On the other hand, using the definition (34) for $`z^\mu `$ we find that (40) can also be written as

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=\frac{i}{2}G_{[\mu \nu ]}(x^{\widehat{\alpha }})dz^\mu d\overline{z}^\nu .$$
(42)
Summarizing we have shown that if $`G_{(\mu \nu )}^{11}=G_{(\mu \nu )}^{22}0`$ and $`G_{(\mu \nu )}^{12}=G_{(\mu \nu )}^{21}=0,`$ and $`G_{[\mu \nu ]}^{11}=G_{[\mu \nu ]}^{22}0`$ and $`G_{[\mu \nu ]}^{12}=G_{[\mu \nu ]}^{21}=0`$ then

$$ds^2=G_{\mu \nu }^{ab}(x_c^\alpha )dx_a^\mu dx_b^\nu $$
(43)
is equivalent to

$$ds^2=G_{\mu \nu }(z^\alpha ,\overline{z}^\beta )dz^\mu d\overline{z}^\nu ,$$
(44)
and that

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=\frac{i}{2}G_{\mu \nu }^{ab}(x_c^\alpha )dx_a^\mu dx_b^\nu $$
(45)
is equivalent to

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=\frac{i}{2}G_{\mu \nu }(z^\alpha ,\overline{z}^\beta )dz^\mu d\overline{z}^\nu .$$
(46)
We recognize in (44) and (46) the formulae used to define the Kahler metric which in addition satisfies the condition $`d\mathrm{\Omega }=0`$. Therefore we have shown that under certain anzats the metric $`G_{\mu \nu }^{ab}(x_c^\alpha )`$ can be identified with the Kahler metric. This shows that it makes mathematical sense to consider a metric of the form $`G_{\mu \nu }^{ab}(x_c^\alpha ).`$

Our goal is now to use the metric $`G_{\mu \nu }^{ab}(x_c^\alpha )`$ in connection with string theory. We find that there are at least two different ways to achieve this. In fact, in the first case we have the action

$$S_1=\frac{1}{2}d^2\xi \sqrt{g}g^{ab}(\xi )_ax_c^\mu _bx_d^\nu G_{\mu \nu }^{cd}(x),$$
(47)
while in the second case we have42

$$S_2=\frac{1}{2}d^2\xi G_{\mu \nu }^{ab}(\xi ,x)_ax^\mu _bx^\nu .$$
(48)
For our purpose to relate matroid theory with string theory both possibilities look attractive. The action $`S_1`$ may be useful to understand T-duality or S-duality because of its property of being symmetric under the interchange of coordinates $`xy.`$ However, $`S_2`$ is closer to our idea of unified worldsheet-target spacetime metrics when matter and ghost mix.

In fact, in the particular case

$$G_{\mu \nu }^{ab}=\sqrt{g}g^{ab}G_{\mu \nu },$$
(49)
one sees that $`S_2`$ is reduced to the Polyakov action (30). This shows that ordinary bosonic string theory is contained in a theory associated to (48). Another particular case for $`G_{\mu \nu }^{ab}`$ is

$$G_{\mu \nu }^{ab}=\sqrt{g}g^{ab}G_{\mu \nu }+i\epsilon ^{ab}B_{\mu \nu },$$
(50)
where $`B_{\mu \nu }=B_{\nu \mu }`$ is a two form and $`\epsilon ^{ab}`$ is the completely antisymmetric tensor with $`\epsilon ^{12}=1.`$ The choice (50) leads to a generalized bosonic string theory, the so called nonlinear sigmal model in two dimensions, in which the string propagates in a background determined not only by gravity but by the antisymmetric two form gauge field $`B`$ with associated field strength $`H=dB.`$ Finally, the third example is provided precisely for what we have already discussed when $`G_{\mu \nu }^{ab}`$ is identified with a Kahler metric.

Here, we are not particularly interested in developing the full theory implied by $`S_2,`$ but to point out how $`S_2`$ can be related to matroid theory via Chern-Simons theory. For this purpose it seems to be convenient to start by recalling briefly how the Kahler structure is related to Chern-Simons theory.

There are a number of restrictions which a background field must satisfy in order to have a consistent string theory. Perhaps one of the most important is the anomaly cancellation fixed by the constraint4

$$dH=trRRtrFF,$$
(51)
where $`R`$ is the curvature associated to $`G_{\mu \nu }`$. The formula (51) is an important restriction for the possible compactifications. One of the most attractive solutions of (51) is when the ten dimensional space-time vacuum state is given by T$`{}_{}{}^{4}\times K`$, where T4 is a maximally symmetric four dimensional spacetime and $`K`$ is a six dimensional Kahler manifold.

Now, it is known that a Kahler metric determines a Kahler manifold, so Kahler metric is related to string theory through (51). In turn (51) contains the second Chern class $`trFF`$ which reduces to the Chern-Simons form. Therefore, Kahler metric is closely related to Chern-Simons formalism in string theory. Consequently, the action $`S_2`$ with the choice of $`G_{\mu \nu }^{ab}`$ as a Kahler metric establishes a connection between matroid theory and string theory via Chern-Simons formalism.

6. ALTERNATIVE CONNECTION BETWEEN MATROID THEORY AND STRING THEORY

The observations in the previous section may motivate to look for a Chern-Simons formulation for strings. An attempt in this direction has been proposed by Zaikov.18 Dolan and Tchrakian43 have proposed a similar structure which has been extensively studied by Castro.44 One of the roots of these developments is the Schild type construction for strings. In this section we shall show that this kind of construction offers a more direct connection between matroid theory and string theory.

Let us first recall the Schild type construction for strings. It is well known that from the action (30) one can derive the Naumbu-Goto action

$$S=Td^2\xi \sqrt{h},$$
(52)
where $`h`$ is the determinant of

$$h_{ab}=_ax^\mu _bx^\nu G_{\mu \nu }(x).$$
(53)
Here, we have restored the tension $`T`$ of the string.

It is not difficult to see that $`h`$ can be written as

$$h=\sigma ^{\mu \nu }\sigma _{\mu \nu },$$
(54)
where

$$\sigma ^{\mu \nu }=\frac{1}{[2!]^{\frac{1}{2}}}\epsilon ^{ab}v_a^\mu (\xi )v_b^\nu (\xi ).$$
(55)
Here, $`v_a^\mu (\xi )`$ is defined by

$$v_a^\mu (\xi )=_bx^\mu (\xi ).$$
(56)
One can show that the action (52) is equivalent to

$$S_p^{(1)}=d^2\xi (\sigma ^{\mu \nu }p_{\mu \nu }\frac{\gamma }{2}(p^{\mu \nu }p_{\mu \nu }+T^2)),$$
(57)
where $`\gamma `$ is a lagrange multiplier and $`p_{\mu \nu }`$ is a linear momentum associated to $`\sigma ^{\mu \nu }`$. If we eliminate $`p_{\mu \nu }`$ from this action we get

$$S_p^{(1)}=\frac{1}{2}d^2\xi (\gamma ^1\sigma ^{\mu \nu }\sigma _{\mu \nu }\gamma T).$$
(58)
By eliminating $`\gamma `$ from (58) we recover action (52). The importance of (57) or (58) is that it now makes sense to set $`T=0.`$ In this case (58) is reduced to the Schild type null 1-brane action13. Here, we are interested in connecting (58) with matroid theory.

Observe that we can relate (58) with matroid theory if we connect $`\sigma ^{\mu \nu }`$ with a matroid structure. Therefore, the question is how expression (55) is related to matroids.

Consider the matrix

$$D=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 1& 1\\ 0& 1& 1& 1\end{array}\right).$$
(59)
The matrix $`D`$ is a realization of the matroid $`E=\{1,2,3,4\}`$ and

$$=\{\{1,2\},\{1,3\},\{1,4\},\{2,3\},\{2,4\},\{3,4\}\}.$$
(60)
This is the uniform matroid $`U_{2,4}.`$ The elements of $`E`$ are identified with the columns of $`D`$ in the form $`1b_a^1,`$ $`2b_a^2`$, $`3b_a^3`$ and $`4b_a^4`$ where $`b_a^\mu `$ are the four columns of $`D`$ and the index $`a`$ runs from $`1`$ to $`2`$. In this case the chirotope formula (9) reads as

$$\chi (\mu ,\nu )signdet(𝐛^\mu ,𝐛^\nu )\{1,0,1\}.$$
(61)
In tensor notation we can write (61) in the form

$$\chi (\mu ,\nu )sign(\epsilon ^{ab}b_a^\mu b_a^\nu )\{1,0,1\}$$
(62)
Let us define

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\mu \nu }\epsilon ^{ab}b_a^\mu b_a^\nu $$
(63)
so that $`\chi (\mu ,\nu )sign\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\mu \nu }`$. Comparing (55) and (63) we observe the great similarity between the two formulae. The main difference is the local property of (55). This is in a certain sense similar to the relation between the flat Minkowski metric $`\eta _{\mu \nu }=diag(1,\mathrm{},1)`$ and a curved metric $`g_{\mu \nu }=g_{\mu \nu }(x).`$ Let us discuss this analogy in more detail.

Consider a $`n`$dimensional manifold $`M.`$ A tangent bundle associated to $`M`$ can be defined as

$$TM=\underset{xM}{}T_x(M),$$
(64)
where $`T_x(M)`$ is the tangent space attached at each point $`x`$ of $`M`$. The cotangent bundle

$$T^{}M=\underset{xM}{}T_x^{}(M)$$
(65)
is defined through the isomorphism $`w:T_x(M)R`$, where $`wT_x^{}(M)`$. The curved metric $`g_{\mu \nu }(x)`$ can be understood as the symmetric positive definite map

$$g:T_x(M)T_x^{}(M).$$
(66)
In tensor notation (45) becomes

$$a_\mu =g_{\mu \nu }a^\nu ,$$
(67)
where $`a^\nu T_x(M)`$ and $`a_\mu T_x^{}(M).`$ A tangent bundle is an example of fiber bundles. In this case the fiber is the tangent space $`T_x(M)`$.

Therefore, the transition from $`\eta _{\mu \nu }`$ to $`g_{\mu \nu }(x)`$ is determined by the transition from flat vector space to a fiber bundle. Similarly, we may say that the transition from $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\mu \nu }`$ to $`\sigma ^{\mu \nu }(\xi )`$ is determined by the transition form matroid structure to matroid bundle structure. But the question is now to understand what we mean by matroid bundle. Fortunately the mathematicians have already developed such a concept.14-17 The matroid bundle concept can be understood as the combinatorial analogue of a fiber bundle. In a matroid bundle the fiber of a bundle is replaced by a matroid. It is worth mentioning that recently, matroid bundle structure was used to combine the concepts of matroid and gravity in a proposed theory called gravitoid.29

Summarizing, we may start with a rank-two realizable matroid $`M`$ such as the example in (59). We construct the chirotope $`\chi (\mu ,\nu )`$ by means of the tensor $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\mu \nu }`$ as in the formula (63). We then make the transition from a matroid structure to matroid bundle structure in such a way that $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\mu \nu }\sigma ^{\mu \nu }(\xi )`$. If we can go from (55) to (56) our task is finished.

Consider the object

$$F_{ab}^\mu =_av_b^\mu (\xi )_bv_a^\nu (\xi ).$$
(68)
If $`F_{ab}^\mu `$ vanishes then a solution of (68) is $`v_a^\mu (\xi )=\frac{x^\mu }{\xi ^a}`$ where $`x^\mu `$ is in this context a gauge function. In this case, one says that $`v_a^\mu (\xi )`$ is a pure gauge. This kind of scenario can be derived from an abelian Chern-Simons action for $`F_{ab}^\mu `$ in the form

$$S_{CS}=\frac{k}{2\pi }d^3\xi \epsilon ^{ijk}v_i^\mu F_{jk\mu }.$$
(69)
This shows once again the great importance of Chern-Simons formulation for a matroid/string connection. In fact, if we substitute expression (56) into (69) then the Zaikov´s Chern-Simons type action for strings is obtained.

It is worth mentioning that in general a p-form $`F`$ that can be written as $`F=v_1\mathrm{}v_p`$ for some $`v_1,\mathrm{},v_pR^n`$ is called decomposable. This means that the two form $`\sigma ^{\mu \nu }(\xi )`$ given in (55) is decomposable. It turns out that decomposable forms may be considered as the starting point to construct the realization space of an oriented matroid (see Ref. 26 chapter 8) These observations provide an additional evidence for the close relation between $`\sigma ^{\mu \nu }(\xi )`$ and oriented matroids.

7. COMMENTS

In the present work we have shown that the Kahler metric may provide an important bridge to connect matroid theory and string theory. Specifically using a generalized string theory we established the following identifications: $`stringtheoryKahlerstructure`$ ; $`ChernSimonstheoryKahlerstructure`$ and $`matroidtheoryChernSimonstheory`$. Moreover, it is natural to expect that this kind of relations suggest a direct link between the generalized string theory described by (48), which by convenience we shall call Kahler-string action, and the pure Chern-Simons theory. But at first sight it is improbable that this more direct relation exists. The reason is that pure Chern-Simons theory does not provide us enough degrees of freedom to describe the dynamics even for the heterotic string theory. Therefore, these observations suggest that there must exist a generalized Chern-Simons action which is reduced to the Kahler-string action (48). Of course, the Kahler structure must play an important role in this generalized Chern-Simons theory. Happily, such a theory along this idea has already been proposed. In fact, some years ago Nair and Schiff45 proposed what they called Kahler-Chern-Simons theory. The action proposed by Nair and Schiff has the form

$$S_{KCS}=\frac{k}{2\pi }_{M^3\times R}Tr(AdA+\frac{2}{3}AAA)\mathrm{\Omega },+Tr(F\mathrm{\Phi }+\mathrm{\Phi }F),$$
(70)
where $`F`$ is the field strength in $`B^4\times R`$, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is a Lie algebra value $`(2,0)`$ form and $`M^4`$is a Kahler manifold of real dimension four. It turns out that $`S_{KCS}`$ provides an action description of antiself-dual gauge fields (instantons) on a four dimensional Kahler manifolds. Here, we are interested in seeing if under quantization $`S_{KCS}`$ is reduced to the Kahler-string action (48). It can be shown, however, that up to WSW term, $`S_{KCS}`$ leads to the action

$$S_3=\frac{1}{2}d^{2+2}\xi \sqrt{g}g_{ij}^{ab}(\xi )\frac{x^\mu }{\xi _i^a}\frac{x^\nu }{\xi _i^a}G_{\mu \nu }(x),$$
(71)
rather than (48). Here, $`g_{ij}^{ab}`$ can be identified with a Kahler metric on $`B^4,`$ while $`G_{\mu \nu }(x)`$ is given by $`G_{\mu \nu }(x)=_\mu U_\nu U^1,`$ where $`U`$ is a locally defined $`G`$-valued function related to the gauge field $`A`$ by $`A=U^1dU.`$ Therefore, we conjecture that there must be a slightly different action from (70), with the property of reducing to (48).

Nevertheless, the action $`S_{KCS}`$ may be of special interest to relate matroid theory not only to string theory but to M-theory itself. In fact, it is known that $`S_{KCS}`$ leads to a theory in terms of fields in a target space of $`N=2`$ strings.46 In turn, $`N=2`$ strings is one of the main proposals of M-theory.47 Moreover, it has been pointed out in Ref. 48 that a number of similarities exist between the other main proposal of M-theory, namely Matrix theory.49 In principle, for $`S_{KCS}`$ one may repeat the formalism of section 4. In fact, consider the partition function

$$Z_{KCS}(L,k)=DA\mathrm{exp}(S_{KCS})\underset{r=1}{\overset{n}{}}W(L_r,\rho _r),$$
(72)
where $`W(L_i,\rho _i)`$ are the Wilson lines defined in (14). It is tempting to speculate that $`Z_{KCS}(L,k)`$ must be related to some knot invariant in a similar way that $`Z_{CS}(L,k)`$ is related to the Jones polynomials. From this idea, since knots are in one to one correspondence with signed graphs one should expect to find the desired relation between matroid theory and $`Z_{KCS}(L,k)`$, which may lead eventually to a matroid theory and M-theory connection.

In section 6, we discuss an alternative possibility to connect matroids and strings. The idea is to consider the Schild type action for strings. (This action is equivalent to the Nambu-Goto action and may be considered as the starting point for the Zaikov and Dolan-Tchrakian constructions for p-branes.) We identify the $`\sigma ^{\mu \nu }`$ factor in (55) with the tensor $`\mathrm{\Sigma }^{\mu \nu }`$ associated to the chirotope $`\chi (\mu ,\nu )`$ via the matroid bundle notion. Such identification may lead to the matroid/string connection if one consider the Chern-Simons structure in (69), which becomes a Zaikov type action after using (56). It is important to mention that the discussion of section 6 can be generalized in straightforward way to any p-brane$`^{50}.`$

Another possible route to connect matroid theory with M-theory comes from the work of Gopakumar and Vafa51-52 who have proved that topological strings are closely related to M- theory. Since Chern-Simons formalism is linked to topological strings,35 it seems that we are closer to make the matroid theory the underlying mathematical structure of M-theory (see Ref. 53 for interesting observations about M- theory).

Finally, besides the possible connection between matroid theory and string theory the present formalism may be of special interest for quantum gravity based on the Ashtekar formalism54 (see also Ref. 55 and references therein). The most interesting solutions of the Ashtekar constraints correspond to the Witten’s partition function. Consequently, the duality symmetries (24) may also play an important role in such solutions. It is known that the Vasiliev invariants become an important tool in the loop solutions of quantum canonical gravity in the Ashtekar formalism. Since the Vasiliev invariants can be understood as a generalization of the Jones polynomials, it may be interesting for further research to investigate whether matroid theory can be connected to such invariants.

Acknowledgment: I would like to thank M. C. Marín, E. Frías, E. Ley-Koo and G. Campoy for helpful comments.