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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

It has been known for some time that plane–fronted, parallel gravitational waves (pp–waves) are exact solutions of string theory . The same is true of pp–wave backgrounds with a non–trivial dilaton and null Neveu–Schwarz–Neveu–Schwarz (NS–NS) 3–form field strength . These backgrounds solve the $`\beta `$–function equations to all orders in $`\alpha ^{}`$. A particular class of pp–wave is the exact plane wave and in recent months the subject of plane waves in string theory has become an intense area of research, the reasons for this renaissance being as follows: after the discovery of maximally supersymmetric plane waves in eleven–dimensional  and ten–dimensional type IIB  supergravity, it was observed  that these solutions can be thought of as Penrose limits of the AdS$`{}_{p}{}^{}\times S^{Dp}`$ vacua of the respective theories. Despite the fact that the ten–dimensional case involves the Ramond–Ramond (R–R) 5–form, it was then shown  that superstring theory on this background can be solved in the light–cone gauge. Finally, a sector of $`𝒩=4`$ super–Yang–Mills (SYM) which is dual to string theory on this background was identified by Berenstein *et al* , for the first time allowing for truly stringy tests of, at least a special limit of, the AdS/CFT correspondence .

The Penrose limit  of any solution of the ten–dimensional supergravity theories  gives a plane wave, which preserves at least one–half of the supersymmetries, but sometimes more: for example, the Penrose limit of the AdS$`{}_{5}{}^{}\times T^{1,1}`$ geometry, dual to a certain $`𝒩=1`$ superconformal gauge theory , gives the same maximally supersymmetric plane wave . Since this latter work, Penrose limits have been taken of a whole host of geometries which arise in string theory. Of most relevance to us are the plane waves one obtains by taking Penrose limits of the geometries dual to *non*–conformal gauge theories: the Pilch–Warner geometry , dual to an $`𝒩=1`$ supersymmetric renormalization group (RG) flow between $`𝒩=4`$ SYM and an $`𝒩=1`$ superconformal infra–red (IR) fixed point ; the near–horizon limits of the D$`p`$-brane geometries for $`p3`$ ; and various other relevant backgrounds .

Issues concerning holography, even in the maximally supersymmetric example, remain mysterious . Although both this  and more general plane waves , have a boundary which is a null line, it is not clear as to what the holographic theory actually is. It is thus even harder to address more general issues regarding RG flows in the plane wave limit, though in this context they have been discussed in . Certain general statements can be made, however: the Penrose limit of a geometry dual to a non–conformal gauge theory results in a plane wave with a time–dependent profile. In light–cone gauge string theory, it is precisely this profile which gives a mass to the worldsheet scalars so, in this case, one generically finds simple harmonic oscillator modes with time–dependent masses .

Moreover, the Penrose limit of the near–horizon D$`p`$-brane geometry for $`p3`$ gives rise to plane waves with profiles of the “wrong sign”; that is, which generate worldsheet scalars with negative (mass)2 111Further examples of the occurence of modes of negative (mass)2 in Penrose limits of other supergravity solutions are studied in .. One might think that such terms signal instabilities although, since the “mass” of the worldsheet scalars is really only an artifact of the light–cone gauge , this naïve thought may not be correct. Either way, the issues involved warrant further investigation.

Already in , it was noted that, for a certain range of parameters, one can generate what appear to be stringy instabilities in a plane wave background with non–trivial 3–form and 5–form field strengths. In this case, however, all the mass terms have the correct sign and the zero modes of the string are unaffected; one would thus not expect to see classical instabilities of the background. In fact, backgrounds with a non–trivial 3–form will prove to be too complicated to analyse in any detail here. Even in the maximally supersymmetric case, however, the dimensionless string theory Hamiltonian is

$$H=\underset{n}{}\sqrt{n^2+M^2}N_n,$$
(1.1)
where $`M`$ denotes the dimensionless mass of the worldsheet scalars and $`N_n`$ is the occupation number for each mode at level $`n`$. It would appear that switching the sign of $`M^2`$ will give rise to instabilities not only for stringy modes with $`n0`$, but also for the zero modes themselves222Of course, upon switching the sign of $`M^2`$, one loses maximal supersymmetry and it is not obvious that the Hamiltonian in this case is given by (1.1) with a simple sign difference. This is one of the issues we will address.. And it is precisely these latter potential instabilities which one might expect to observe in a standard classical analysis.

Our purpose here is to assess the perturbative stability or otherwise of plane waves. That is, we will consider whether there exist solutions of the linearized field equations which grow exponentially in time. As far as we are aware, this is the first study of classical stability for non–static, though possibly stationary, spacetimes. Although we are only able to explicitly solve the relevant equations for the plane waves with *constant* profiles (the so–called Cahen–Wallach spaces ), this class of spacetimes certainly includes cases for which the (mass)2 of the worldsheet scalars is negative. We will show that this class of plane waves does not exhibit classical instabilities. It would also seem that scalar field theory in this background is well–defined, in the sense that it too is stable .

In the following section, we briefly review pp– and plane waves in an arbitrary number of dimensions, commenting on some general properties relating to the issue of stability, including supersymmetry and particle production. We study the string theory dispersion relation in the ten–dimensional vacuum plane wave in section 3, to assess in what sense it shows signs of instabilities. In section 4, we compute the linearized vacuum field equations of type IIB supergravity, specialising to the light–cone gauge to restrict ourselves to purely physical degrees of freedom. The resulting equations are analysed in section 5. Our analysis of the metric perturbations is applicable to plane waves in any dimension, and that of the dilaton and form–field perturbations generalize fairly readily. We conclude in section 6.

## 2 The spacetime

Consider the vacuum pp–wave solution in an arbitrary number of dimensions (in the following section we will specialize to waves of type IIB supergravity). The metric

$$\mathrm{d}s^2=2\mathrm{d}u\mathrm{d}v+H(u,x)\mathrm{d}u^2+\mathrm{d}x^i\mathrm{d}x^i(i=1,\mathrm{},D2),$$
(2.1)
has curvature

$$R_{uiuj}=\frac{1}{2}_i_jH,R_{uu}=\frac{1}{2}_i_iH,$$
(2.2)
and scalar Laplacian

$$\mathrm{}=2_u_vH(u,x)_v^2+_i_i,$$
(2.3)
where we should note that we will not distinguish between upper and lower transverse indices. In general, the only isometry of this spacetime is that generated by the null Killing vector $`/v`$.

Taking $`ϵ=0`$ for null geodesics, $`ϵ=1`$ for timelike geodesics, and with $`\lambda `$ denoting the affine parameter, this isometry gives rise to a conserved energy, $`E`$:

$$u(\lambda )=E\lambda +u_0.$$
(2.4)
The constraint $`=ϵ`$ is used to solve for $`v`$: with a dot denoting differentiation with respect to $`\lambda `$, we have

$$v(\lambda )=\frac{1}{2E}\left(ϵ+H(u,x)E^2+\dot{x}^i\dot{x}^i\right)d\lambda +v_0,$$
(2.5)
where the transverse coordinates satisfy

$$\ddot{x}^i=\frac{1}{2}_iHE^2.$$
(2.6)
For the plane wave, with $`H(u,x)=A_{ij}(u)x^ix^j`$, one can solve this equation for arbitrary initial conditions $`x^i(0)`$ and $`\dot{x}^i(0)`$.

The general pp–wave is singular, albeit in a special sense since all curvature invariants vanish identically . To see this, one constructs an orthonormal frame which is parallelly propagated along a time–like geodesic, with tangent vector

$$T^a=(E,\dot{v},\dot{x}^i).$$
(2.7)
The unit normals

$$n_{(i)}^a=(0,\frac{\dot{x}^i}{E},\delta _{(i)}^i),m^a=(E,\dot{v}+\frac{1}{E},\dot{x}^i),$$
(2.8)
all obey $`\left(Tn\right)^a=0`$, as required for a parallelly propagated frame of reference. The non–zero components of the Riemann curvature with respect to this frame of reference,

$`R_{(T)(i)(T)(j)}`$ $``$ $`R_{abcd}T^an_{(i)}^bT^cn_{(j)}^d={\displaystyle \frac{E^2}{2}}_i_jH,`$ (2.9)
$`R_{(m)(i)(m)(j)}`$ $``$ $`R_{abcd}m^an_{(i)}^bm^cn_{(j)}^d={\displaystyle \frac{E^2}{2}}_i_jH,`$ (2.10)
will generically diverge. If such a divergence occurs at some point in the spacetime, then an observer will encounter infinite tidal forces at that point, and the space is geodesically *in*complete333It is amusing to note that one encounters these “pp–curvature singularities” in the solutions describing pp–waves on fundamental strings , and also in non–dilatonic “brane–wave” solutions of ten– and eleven–dimensional supergravity . In that case, even the exact plane waves give rise to such curvature singularities at the would–be horizon of the brane. Presumably, the related solutions considered in  have a similar global structure.. The only *non–singular* pp–wave  is the plane wave, for which

$$H(u,x)=A_{ij}(u)x^ix^j,$$
(2.11)
where $`A_{ij}(u)`$ is a *smooth* function of $`u`$. (For constant $`A_{ij}`$, this is a Lorentzian symmetric space .) In this case,

$$R_{(T)(i)(T)(j)}=R_{(m)(i)(m)(j)}=E^2A_{ij}(u),$$
(2.12)
and the tidal force is attractive for positive eigenvalues of $`A_{ij}`$ and repulsive for negative eigenvalues. It might appear that this notion of a singularity is observer–dependent, but this is not the case since the tidal force, divergent or otherwise, would be experienced by *all* time–like observers. Indeed, one can show that the metric function $`A_{ij}(u)`$ encodes diffeomorphism–invariant properties of the spacetime .

The nature of the tidal force is seen in the geodesics also. The vacuum field equation is simply

$$\mathrm{tr}A(u)=0,$$
(2.13)
and, for constant $`A_{ij}`$, we can always diagonalize, taking $`A_{ij}=\lambda _{(i)}\delta _{ij}`$. Then there must be at least one negative eigenvalue, and we can write $`\lambda _{(i)}=\pm \mu _{(i)}^2`$. The geodesic equations for this simple case are easily solved: $`u`$ and $`v`$ are as in (2.4) and (2.5), and

$$x^i=A^i\mathrm{cos}(\mu _{(i)}E\lambda )+B^i\mathrm{sin}(\mu _{(i)}E\lambda )(\lambda _{(i)}=\mu _{(i)}^2),$$
(2.14)
$$x^i=A^i\mathrm{exp}(\mu _{(i)}E\lambda )+B^i\mathrm{exp}(\mu _{(i)}E\lambda )(\lambda _{(i)}=\mu _{(i)}^2).$$
(2.15)
The attractive tidal force in the first case gives oscillatory behaviour around the origin, and the repulsive tidal force in the latter case gives geodesics which are pushed off to infinity. In this sense, the vacuum spacetime exhibits an instability (and we will see the same behaviour in the zero modes of the string in this background below). This behaviour is reminiscent of de Sitter space, in which particles also accelerate forever and, just as in that case, the repulsive tidal force in the directions associated with negative eigenvalues does not necessarily give rise to instabilities in the usual sense444The Penrose limit of pure de Sitter space is just flat space, as for pure anti–de Sitter space . Although such a spacetime is not a solution of any known supergravity theory, if we consider the Penrose limit of de Sitter space times a sphere, along a geodesic which has angular momentum on the sphere, then we do find negative eigenvalues coming from the de Sitter directions.. In the case of de Sitter space, stability is guaranteed by the “cosmic no hair” conjecture , and one might wonder if there is a similar argument for the case of the plane wave.

Since all such plane waves are at least one–half supersymmetric, one might be tempted to argue that they *must* be stable. However, the extent to which the standard arguments  concerning stability and supersymmetry apply here is unclear. After all, the spacetime is not asymptotically flat. Moreover, the supersymmetries common to all such plane waves do not commute with the Hamiltonian. One can thus write down one–half supersymmetric configurations which nevertheless do *not* solve the relevant field equations . However, demanding extra or, in the language of , supernumerary, supersymmetries does restrict one to solutions of the field equations; and indeed it would seem that any such solution which preserves more than one–half of the supersymmetries does not give rise to the potential problems alluded to above. For example, it is fairly easy to see that waves with time–dependent profiles never have such supernumerary supersymmetries.

More explicitly, the integrability condition for the existence of Killing spinors is

$$[D_u,D_i]ϵ=\frac{1}{4}_i_jH\mathrm{\Gamma }_j\mathrm{\Gamma }_+ϵ=0,$$
(2.16)
and multiplying this from the left with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_i`$ gives

$$_i_iH\mathrm{\Gamma }_+ϵ=0,$$
(2.17)
where $`_i_iH=0`$ is the field equation. One can thus have the standard supersymmetries, satisfying $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_+ϵ=0`$, without solving the field equation. Supernumerary supersymmetries, however, have $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_+ϵ0`$ so, if any of these are to exist, the field equation must be satisfied. Of course, in this vacuum example, there are no supernumerary supersymmetries anyway. In the more general case with background fluxes, it is true that the existence of supernumerary supersymmetries implies the field equations, but this is harder to see. One has to consider the Killing spinor equation directly, in addition to the variation of any other fermionic fields, for example the dilatino in type IIB supergravity. An analogous study of the integrability condition for the existence of Killing spinors in this more general case is not enough555We thank the anonymous referee for pointing out the problems with our original argument in this case..

Further general comments are in order with respect to particle production in these backgrounds. It is easy to see that Gibbons’ original argument  — that there is no production of massless scalars in the sandwich wave — can be generalized to *any* pp–wave (see, *e.g.*). Given that $`/v`$ generates an isometry, we can always decompose the modes of a scalar field in the pp–wave background with respect to $`v`$, as

$$\varphi (u,v,x)=e^{ip_{}v}\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(u,x).$$
(2.18)
To determine whether there is particle production, we need to consider whether the “in” modes in the asymptotic past are orthogonal to the “out” modes in the asymptotic future666In the case of the sandwich wave, in the asymptotic past and future, the spacetime is flat and the obvious “in” and “out” states can be constructed . More generally, one can imagine  an RG flow from some constant $`A_{ij}`$ to some other constant $`A_{ij}`$ in which case one can define “in” and “out” states in these stationary regions of spacetime.. The Klein–Gordon scalar product is

$$(\varphi ,\psi )=i_\mathrm{\Sigma }d\mathrm{\Sigma }^a\sqrt{g_\mathrm{\Sigma }}\varphi \stackrel{}{_a}\psi ^{},$$
(2.19)
where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the null surface $`u=0`$, with unit normal $`/v`$. Despite the fact that these spacetimes are not globally hyperbolic  (see also ), this is a good substitute for a Cauchy surface : it fails to capture only those geodesics moving parallel to the wave, with $`u=\text{constant}`$, and these will never interact with the wave itself. Explicitly, we have

$$(\varphi ,\psi )=i_\mathrm{\Sigma }dv\mathrm{d}^{D2}x\varphi \stackrel{}{_v}\psi ^{},$$
(2.20)
so the mode functions are always orthogonal, since they are simple exponentials in $`v`$. For any pp–wave, the null Killing vector $`/v`$ allows for a preferred notion of frequency, so there can be no particle production and the resulting Bogoliubov coefficients must vanish.

One might then argue that scalar fields in the pp–wave background are always stable, since presumably an instability in such a field will cause runaway particle production. What is less clear is whether this implies stability of the background itself (some comments in  seem to be make this connection). One should also consider what effects interactions have .

## 3 String theory on the plane wave

Of course, the zero modes of a string in the plane wave background will follow the same geodesics as above but we should also consider the non–zero modes to see what effect, if any, they have. Moreover, it would appear from (1.1) that the zero modes themselves will give rise to instabilities for negative eigenvalues of the metric function $`A_{ij}`$, and it is this issue that we want to address here. Ultimately, we are interested in whether or not there are tachyonic modes of the string (or particle) in the plane wave background. Since the notion of “mass” in this case is not the same as in flat space, we will ask the question as to whether there is faster–than–light propagation of any modes. It would appear that there *is* though, again, in a similar way as for de Sitter space.

Since we are still working with the vacuum solution, the worldsheet fermions are unchanged from the usual flat space results. In the light–cone gauge, they are affected only by background fluxes . Indeed, since the vacuum backgrounds are necessarily only one–half supersymmetric, there are no linearly realized worldsheet supersymmetries at all — after fixing the kappa–symmetry, only supernumerary supersymmetries are linearly realized . Then it should not be surprising that, whereas the worldsheet scalars are massive, the fermions will still be massless. We will thus consider only bosonic string theory here.

The action

$$S=\frac{1}{4\pi \alpha ^{}}d\sigma d\tau \sqrt{h}h^{\alpha \beta }_\alpha X^a_\beta X^bg_{ab},$$
(3.1)
with background metric

$$\mathrm{d}s^2=2\mathrm{d}u\mathrm{d}vA_{ij}(u)x^ix^j\mathrm{d}u^2+\mathrm{d}x^i\mathrm{d}x^i(i=1,\mathrm{},8),$$
(3.2)
has the energy–momentum tensor

$$T_{\alpha \beta }=\frac{1}{\alpha ^{}}\left(_\alpha X^a_\beta X^bg_{ab}\frac{1}{2}h_{\alpha \beta }X^aX^bg_{ab}\right),$$
(3.3)
and canonical momenta

$`P_{}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{}{\dot{V}}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{l_s^2}}\dot{U},`$ (3.4)
$`P_+`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{}{\dot{U}}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{l_s^2}}\left(\dot{V}A_{ij}X^iX^j\dot{U}\right),`$ (3.5)
$`P_i`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{}{\dot{X}^i}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{l_s^2}}\dot{X}^i.`$ (3.6)
where $`l_s^2=2\pi \alpha ^{}`$. The $`V`$ equation implies that $`\mathrm{}U=0`$, so taking $`U=U(\tau )`$, we have

$$U=l_s^2P_{}\tau +U_0,$$
(3.7)
which is the light–cone gauge. In that case, the constraint $`T_{00}=0`$ gives, upon substitution of the momenta,

$$2P_+P_{}=P_{}^2A_{ij}X^iX^j+P_iP_i+\frac{_\sigma X^i_\sigma X^i}{l_s^4}.$$
(3.8)
$`V`$ is given implicitly by the constraint, leaving the transverse coordinates as the physical degrees of freedom. Taking the metric function $`A_{ij}=\lambda _{(i)}\delta _{ij}`$, and defining the dimensionless mass $`M_{(i)}=\mu _{(i)}l_s^2P_{}`$, we have

$$\mathrm{}X^iM_{(i)}^2X^i=0(\lambda _{(i)}=\pm \mu _{(i)}^2).$$
(3.9)
Consider, first, the zero modes:

$`X_0^i(\tau )=x^i\mathrm{cos}\left(M_{(i)}\tau \right)+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha ^{}}{M_{(i)}}}\mathrm{sin}\left(M_{(i)}\tau \right)p^i(\lambda _{(i)}=\mu _{(i)}^2),`$ (3.10)
$`X_0^i(\tau )=x^i\mathrm{cosh}\left(M_{(i)}\tau \right)+{\displaystyle \frac{\alpha ^{}}{M_{(i)}}}\mathrm{sinh}\left(M_{(i)}\tau \right)p^i(\lambda _{(i)}=\mu _{(i)}^2),`$ (3.11)
which of course match the geodesics (2.14) and (2.15) above. The centre–of–mass of the string will thus oscillate about the origin of those directions associated with positive eigenvalues, and will accelerate forever in the directions associated with negative eigenvalues.

The non–zero modes are solved for by making the Ansatz

$$X^i(\tau ,\sigma )=\underset{n0}{}C_n^ie^{i(\omega _n\tau +n\sigma )},$$
(3.12)
giving

$$\omega _n^2=n^2\pm M_{(i)}^2(\lambda _{(i)}=\pm \mu _{(i)}^2),$$
(3.13)
For negative eigenvalues, the set of modes with $`|n|<M_{(i)}`$ have $`\omega _n^2<0`$. As in the more general case considered in , some of the $`\omega _n`$ become imaginary, and would seem to correspond to unstable modes. However, this is an instability with respect to mode creation on the string worldsheet, in precisely the sense of , and not in the sense that we are concerned with here. We do not expect to see truly stringy instabilities in our perturbative analysis. Again as in , these stringy instabilities exist only for some range of $`n`$. In particular, we have unstable modes only if

$$\mu _{(i)}P_{}>T,$$
(3.14)
$`T=1/l_s^2`$ being the string tension. Unstable modes only appear if either the light–cone momentum of the string, or the curvature of the background, is large with respect to the string scale (the same is true in the more general case considered in ).

In the directions associated with positive eigenvalues, the oscillator modes are given by

$$X^i=i\sqrt{\frac{\alpha ^{}}{2}}\underset{n0}{}\frac{1}{\omega _n}\left(\alpha _n^ie^{in\sigma }+\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_n^ie^{in\sigma }\right)e^{i\omega _n\tau },$$
(3.15)
where, for $`n>0`$, $`\omega _n=\sqrt{n^2+M_{(i)}^2}`$ and, to ensure reality,

$$\omega _n=\omega _n,\left(\alpha _n^i\right)^{}=\alpha _n^i,\left(\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_n^i\right)^{}=\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_n^i.$$
(3.16)
In the remaining directions, associated with negative eigenvalues, we have

$$X^i=i\sqrt{\frac{\alpha ^{}}{2}}\underset{|n|>M_{(i)}}{}\frac{1}{\omega _n}\left(\alpha _n^ie^{in\sigma }+\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_n^ie^{in\sigma }\right)e^{i\omega _n\tau }+\sqrt{\frac{\alpha ^{}}{2}}\underset{|n|<M_{(i)}}{}\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }_n}\left(\beta _n^ie^{in\sigma }+\left(\beta _n^i\right)^{}e^{in\sigma }\right)e^{\mathrm{\Omega }_n\tau },$$
(3.17)
where, for $`n>0`$, $`\omega _n=\sqrt{n^2M_{(i)}^2}`$, and the same conditions as in (3.16) apply to ensure reality. The $`\beta _n^i`$ operators are associated with the exponentially growing/decaying modes and we have set $`\omega _n=i\mathrm{\Omega }_n`$ for $`|n|<M_{(i)}`$ where, for $`n>0`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n=\sqrt{M_{(i)}^2n^2}`$. Then the expansion for the unstable modes is manifestly real. To include all the relevant modes in this case, we also set $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n=\mathrm{\Omega }_n`$.

The non–vanishing Poisson brackets are then

$$[x^i,p^j]_{PB}=\delta ^{ij},$$

$$[\alpha _m^i,\alpha _n^j]_{PB}=[\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_m^i,\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_n^j]_{PB}=i\omega _m\delta _{m+n,0}\delta ^{ij},$$

$$[\beta _m^i,\beta _n^j]_{PB}=[\left(\beta _m^i\right)^{},\left(\beta _n^j\right)^{}]_{PB}=\mathrm{\Omega }_m\delta _{m+n,0}\delta ^{ij}.$$
(3.18)
Upon quantisation, the modes with real $`\omega _n`$ will give rise to the usual harmonic oscillators, but those with imaginary $`\omega _n`$ have an extra factor of $`i`$. In other words, the $`\beta _n^i`$ do not correspond to harmonic oscillators, rather they are associated with the unstable worldsheet modes.

Substituting for the mode expansions of the worldsheet scalars and the respective momenta into (3.8) gives

$$2(2\pi )^2P_+P_{}=(2\pi )^2P_{}^2\lambda _{(i)}x^ix^i+p^ip^i+\frac{1}{\alpha ^{}}\underset{n0}{}\left(\alpha _n^i\alpha _n^i+\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_n^i\stackrel{~}{\alpha }_n^i\right)$$

$$+\frac{1}{\alpha ^{}}\underset{|n|<M_{(i)}}{}\left(\beta _n^i\beta _n^i+\left(\beta _n^i\right)^{}\left(\beta _n^i\right)^{}\right),$$
(3.19)
where the first oscillator sum runs over all directions associated with positive eigenvalues, and over those modes for which $`|n|>M_{(i)}`$ in the directions associated with negative eigenvalues. The second sum applies to the latter directions only. The $`P_{}^2`$ contribution comes from the zero modes, so would also be present in the case of a particle. In either case, it is not at all obvious as to how this dispersion relation gives us information on what our flat–space intuition would call a “mass”. In flat space, we have

$$2P_+=\frac{1}{P_{}}\left(p^ip^i+\text{oscillators}\right),$$
(3.20)
which gives well–defined behaviour; in particular, $`P_+0`$ as $`P_{}\mathrm{}`$, so that we never have faster–than–light propagation. In the case at hand, however, we have

$$2P_+=P_{}\lambda _{(i)}x^ix^i+\frac{1}{P_{}}\left(p^ip^i+\text{oscillators}\right),$$
(3.21)
the non–standard dependence on $`P_{}`$ giving rise to “unstable” behaviour: depending on the sign of $`\lambda _{(i)}`$, we have $`P_+\pm \mathrm{}`$ as either $`P_{}\mathrm{}`$ or $`\mu _{(i)}\mathrm{}`$. In either case, we know that in this limit, only the zero modes survive, since all the stringy modes with $`n>0`$ are unstable; the string is literally ripped apart. Note that modes with small $`P_{}`$ behave as if they have a positive mass, so in this infra–red regime, there are no tachyonic excitations.

At any rate, based on flat–space intuition it would appear that we either have slower–than–light or faster–than–light propagation depending on this sign. Negative eigenvalues seem to give tachyonic behaviour, but this is presumably to be expected since particles (and strings) accelerate forever. Even so, we will not find any unstable modes in the analysis below. As we will see, the problem in this simple case reduces to the quantum mechanics of the inverted oscillator in which similar behaviour is observed: quantum particles accelerate forever, but the system is perturbatively stable. Various subtleties concerning this dispersion relation are addressed in , where it is argued that imposing boundary conditions at some finite $`x^ix^i=L^2`$ effectively removes the problems associated with large $`P_{}`$.

To make contact with (1.1), we rescale

$$\alpha _n^i=\sqrt{\omega _n}a_n^i,\alpha _n^i=\sqrt{\omega _n}\overline{a}_n^i,\beta _n^i=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }_n},\beta _n^i=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }_n}\overline{b}_n^i,$$
(3.22)
and likewise for the $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }`$ and $`\beta ^{}`$, and combine the zero modes as

$$a_0^i=\frac{1}{\sqrt{M_{(i)}\alpha ^{}}}\left(\alpha ^{}p^iiM_{(i)}x^i\right),\overline{a}_0^i=\frac{1}{\sqrt{M_{(i)}\alpha ^{}}}\left(\alpha ^{}p^i+iM_{(i)}x^i\right).$$
(3.23)
Upon quantisation, the new operators obey

$$[a_0^i,\overline{a}_0^j]=\delta ^{ij},[a_m^i,\overline{a}_n^j]=\delta _{mn}\delta ^{ij},[b_m^i,\overline{b}_n^j]=i\delta _{mn}\delta ^{ij},$$
(3.24)
and likewise for the $`\stackrel{~}{\alpha }`$ and $`\beta ^{}`$, and we have

$$2P_+P_{}=\frac{1}{\alpha ^{}}\underset{i}{}\left(M_{(i)}N_0^{(i)}+\underset{n>0}{}\omega _n^{(i)}N_n^{(i)}+\underset{|n|<M_{(i)}}{}\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{(i)}\widehat{N}_n^{(i)}\right),$$
(3.25)
where $`M_{(i)}=\pm \mu _{(i)}l_s^2P_{}`$, $`\omega _n^i=\sqrt{n^2+M_{(i)}^2}`$, $`N_n^{(i)}=a_n^i\overline{a}_n^i+\stackrel{~}{a}_n^i\stackrel{~}{\overline{a}}_n^i`$ and $`\widehat{N}_n^{(i)}=b_n^i\overline{b}_n^i+(b_n^i)^{}(\overline{b}_n^i)^{}`$.

## 4 Linearized field equations

We will consider perturbations of the type IIB version of the vacuum plane wave discussed in section 2. We have some results regarding the non–vacuum solution, but will not discuss them here since this case is much harder to analyse in any detail. Moreover, the vacuum solution is the cleanest in which possible negative (mass)2 terms are generated on the string worldsheet.

The field content of the bosonic sector of type IIB supergravity is: a complex scalar, $`\mathrm{\Phi }=\chi +ie^\varphi `$, combining the axion and dilaton, $`\chi `$ and $`\varphi `$; a complex 2–form potential with field strength

$$G_3=\mathrm{d}A_2=H_3+iF_3,$$
(4.1)
combining the NS–NS and R–R 3–form field strengths, $`H_3`$ and $`F_3`$; and an R–R 4-form potential with self–dual field strength

$$F_5=F_5=\mathrm{d}C_4\frac{1}{8}\mathrm{}(A_2G_3^{}),$$
(4.2)
where $``$ denotes complex conjugation and $``$ denotes ten–dimensional Hodge duality. We take the field equations from , perturbations of which, in a vacuum background, simplify dramatically.

### 4.1 Scalar perturbations

Throughout the analysis we will find ourselves solving the field equations similar to those for a massless scalar, so consider the complex scalar, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, which satisfies

$$\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Phi }=0.$$
(4.3)
We want to look for instabilities, *i.e.* modes which grow exponentially in time, where “time” is $`u`$. We will also demand that the modes are normalizable — either $`L^2`$ normalizable or delta–function normalizable — in $`v`$ and all transverse directions. We have already discussed above that we can always decompose the modes with respect to the Killing vector $`/v`$, so we make the Ansatz

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}(x),$$
(4.4)
where $`(x)=\varphi _1(x)+i\varphi _2(x)`$ depends on all transverse coordinates. Then

$$\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Phi }=e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}\left[(2p_{}p_++H(u,x)p_{}^2)(x)+_k_k(x)\right].$$
(4.5)
We assume that $`p_{}`$ is real, else the modes will not be normalizable in the $`v`$ direction, and unstable modes will have imaginary $`p_+`$. Our approach will be to consider those modes with real $`p_+`$ and show that in fact this includes all modes with real momentum $`p_{}`$, so

$$[2p_{}p_++H(u,x)p_{}^2]\varphi (x)+_k_k\varphi (x)=0,$$
(4.6)
for both $`\varphi =\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi =\varphi _2`$. We will see that precisely the same equation controls the perturbations of all supergravity fields, and will analyse the solutions in the following section.

### 4.2 Metric perturbations

As usual in perturbation theory, we need to choose a gauge to restrict ourselves to physical degrees of freedom. Although the standard transverse, trace–free gauge considerably simplifies the linearized field equations, this choice does not entirely fix the gauge. We will rather make use of the light–cone gauge, which is well–suited to our background spacetime; but also has the advantage of fixing the gauge freedom entirely. The field equation777One often thinks of the linearized vacuum field equation to be the vanishing of the Lichnerowicz operator  acting on the metric perturbations. This is true only in the transverse, trace–free gauge however. That is $`_\mathrm{L}h_{ab}=2\delta R_{ab}`$ only if $`h=g^{ab}h_{ab}=_bh_a^b=0`$. Since we will not be working in this gauge, our vacuum field equation is $`\delta R_{ab}=0`$, and not $`_\mathrm{L}h_{ab}=0`$. is $`\delta R_{ab}=0`$.

The light–cone gauge is defined by

$$h_{va}=0,a,$$
(4.7)
and substituting for this gives

$`2\delta R_{uu}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}h_{uu}2_u(_vh_{uu}+_ih_{iu})_i_jHh_{ij}2_iH_jh_{ij},`$ (4.8)
$`2\delta R_{uv}`$ $`=`$ $`_v(_vh_{uu}+_ih_{iu}),`$ (4.9)
$`2\delta R_{ui}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}h_{ui}+_jH_vh_{ij}_i(_vh_{uu}+_jh_{ju}),`$ (4.10)
$`2\delta R_{vv}`$ $`=`$ $`_v^2h_{ii},`$ (4.11)
$`2\delta R_{vi}`$ $`=`$ $`_v(_vh_{iu}+_jh_{ij}),`$ (4.12)
$`2\delta R_{ij}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{}h_{ij}.`$ (4.13)
For the maximally supersymmetric plane wave, these results were effectively derived in . As in that case, the equations $`\delta R_{va}=0`$ appear as constraints, which we solve by taking

$$h_{ii}=0,_vh_{iu}+_jh_{ij}=0,_vh_{uu}+_ih_{iu}=0,$$
(4.14)
which leaves the equations

$$\mathrm{}h_{ij}=0,$$
(4.15)
$$\mathrm{}h_{iu}+_jH_vh_{ij}=0,$$
(4.16)
$$\mathrm{}h_{uu}_i_jHh_{ij}2_iH_jh_{ij}=0.$$
(4.17)
We thus need only solve

$$\mathrm{}h_{ij}=0,$$
(4.18)
all other components of $`h_{ab}`$ following from $`h_{ij}`$ *via* the constraints (4.14). Working in the light–cone gauge reduces the degrees of freedom to the physical ones only, the transverse components $`h_{ij}`$, minus the trace.

We make the Ansatz

$$h_{ij}=\mathrm{}\left\{\xi _{ij}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}(x)\right\},$$
(4.19)
where, as in the previous subsection, $`(x)=\varphi _1(x)+i\varphi _2(x)`$. $`\xi _{ij}=\xi _{(ij)}`$ denotes a constant polarisation tensor which satisfies $`\xi _{ii}=0`$. Again we consider modes normalizable in $`v`$ (real $`p_{}`$) with real $`p_+`$. Then

$$\mathrm{}h_{ij}=\mathrm{}\left\{\xi _{ij}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}\left[(2p_{}p_++H(u,x)p_{}^2)(x)+_k_k(x)\right]\right\}=0.$$
(4.20)
Writing this in terms of real and imaginary parts, we have

$$[2p_{}p_++H(u,x)p_{}^2]\varphi (x)+_k_k\varphi (x)=0,$$
(4.21)
for both $`\varphi =\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi =\varphi _2`$, just as in (4.6) above.

The constraints (4.14) give

$$h_{iu}=\mathrm{}\left\{\frac{i}{p_{}}\xi _{ij}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}_j(x)\right\},h_{uu}=\mathrm{}\left\{\frac{1}{p_{}^2}\xi _{ij}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}_i_j(x)\right\},$$
(4.22)
though we still need to check for consistency with the field equations (4.16) and (4.17). Substituting for the above results, we find

$`(4.16)`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{i}{p_{}}}\xi _{ij}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}_j\left[(2p_{}p_++H(u,x)p_{}^2)(x)+_k_k(x)\right]\right\}=0,`$ (4.23)
$`(4.17)`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{p_{}^2}}\xi _{ij}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}_i_j\left[(2p_{}p_++H(u,x)p_{}^2)(x)+_k_k(x)\right]\right\}=0,`$ (4.24)
so consistency is guaranteed and we need only take $`\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi _2`$ to satisfy (4.6). Solutions of this equation thus fix *all* metric perturbations.

### 4.3 4–form perturbations

In addition to (4.7), we now also impose

$$\delta C_{vabc}=0,a,b,c,$$
(4.25)
so that

$$\delta F_{va_1\mathrm{}a_4}=_v\delta C_{a_1\mathrm{}a_4}.$$
(4.26)
Perturbing the self–duality condition $`F_5=F_5`$ gives

$`\delta F_{vi_1\mathrm{}i_4}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4!}}\epsilon _{i_1\mathrm{}i_4j_1\mathrm{}j_4}\delta F_{vj_1\mathrm{}j_4},`$ (4.27)
$`\delta F_{uvijk}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{5!}}\epsilon _{ijki_1\mathrm{}i_5}\delta F_{i_1\mathrm{}i_5},`$ (4.28)
$`\delta F_{ui_1\mathrm{}i_4}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4!}}\epsilon _{i_1\mathrm{}i_4j_1\mathrm{}j_4}\delta F_{uj_1\mathrm{}j_4},`$ (4.29)
where $`\epsilon _{i_1\mathrm{}i_8}=\epsilon _{uvi_1\mathrm{}i_8}`$. The 4–form potential is anti–self–dual in eight dimensions, since (4.27) gives

$$\delta C_{i_1\mathrm{}i_4}=\frac{1}{4!}\epsilon _{i_1\mathrm{}i_4j_1\mathrm{}j_4}\delta C_{j_1\mathrm{}j_4}.$$
(4.30)
Furthermore, (4.28) is just the constraint

$$_v\delta C_{uijk}+_l\delta C_{lijk}=0,$$
(4.31)
which can be solved for $`\delta C_{uijk}`$.

The 4–form equation of motion is

$$^e\delta F_{eabcd}=0,$$
(4.32)
the $`\{u,v,i,j\}`$ component of which can be solved by taking

$$_k\delta C_{kuij}=0,$$
(4.33)
and the $`\{v,i,j,k\}`$ component gives the constraint (4.31). The remaining components are

$$\mathrm{}\delta C_{ijkl}=0,$$
(4.34)
$$\mathrm{}\delta C_{uijk}+_lH_v\delta C_{lijk}=0,$$
(4.35)
and, again, we will see below that the solution for $`\delta C_{uijk}`$ found from the constraint (4.31) is consistent with this field equation.

Since the 4–form is real, we make a similar Ansatz to (4.19) above:

$$\delta C_{ijkl}=\mathrm{}\left\{ϵ_{ijkl}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}(x)\right\},$$
(4.36)
where

$$ϵ_{i_1\mathrm{}i_4}=\frac{1}{4!}\epsilon _{i_1\mathrm{}i_4j_1\mathrm{}j_4}ϵ_{j_1\mathrm{}j_4},$$
(4.37)
is a constant polarisation tensor, anti–self–dual in eight dimensions, and $`(x)=\varphi _1(x)+i\varphi _2(x)`$. Then

$$\mathrm{}\delta C_{ijkl}=\mathrm{}\left\{ϵ_{ijkl}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}\left[(2p_{}p_++H(u,x)p_{}^2)(x)+_m_m(x)\right]\right\}=0.$$
(4.38)
The constraint (4.31) gives

$$\delta C_{uijkl}=\mathrm{}\left\{\frac{i}{p_{}}ϵ_{lijk}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}_lF(x)\right\},$$
(4.39)
so that (4.33) is an identity, and substituting this into the field equation (4.35) gives

$$\mathrm{}\left\{\frac{i}{p_{}}ϵ_{lijk}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}_l\left[(2p_{}p_++H(u,x)p_{}^2)(x)+_m_m(x)\right]\right\}=0.$$
(4.40)
Again, both $`\varphi =\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi =\varphi _2`$ must satisfy (4.6).

### 4.4 2–form perturbations

The 2–form perturbations go through in the same way as the for the 4–form above, the only difference being that they are complex. Taking

$$\delta A_{va}=0,a$$
(4.41)
gives

$$\delta G_{vab}=_v\delta A_{ab}.$$
(4.42)
The equation of motion is

$$^c\delta G_{cab}=0,$$
(4.43)
the $`\{u,v\}`$ and $`\{v,i\}`$ components of which are constraints which can be solved by taking

$$_i\delta A_{iu}=0,_v\delta A_{ui}+_j\delta A_{ji}=0.$$
(4.44)
This leaves

$$\mathrm{}\delta A_{ij}=0,$$
(4.45)
$$\mathrm{}\delta A_{ui}+_jH_v\delta A_{ji}=0,$$
(4.46)
the structure of which is the same as for the 4–form perturbations. Writing

$$\delta A_{ij}=\zeta _{ij}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}(x),$$
(4.47)
for some constant complex polarisation tensor $`\zeta _{ij}=\zeta _{[ij]}`$, gives

$$\mathrm{}\delta A_{ij}=\zeta _{ij}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}\left[(2p_{}p_++H(u,x)p_{}^2)(x)+_k_k(x)\right]=0.$$
(4.48)
The constraint (4.44) gives

$$\delta A_{ui}=\frac{i}{p_{}}\zeta _{ji}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}_j(x),$$
(4.49)
and the field equation (4.46) is

$$\frac{i}{p_{}}\zeta _{ji}e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}_j\left[(2p_{}p_++H(u,x)p_{}^2)(x)+_k_k(x)\right]=0,$$
(4.50)
so we see precisely the same structure as above.

## 5 Classical stability

In the above section, we showed that the linearized field equations effectively reduce to the problem of solving (4.6):

$$[2p_{}p_++H(u,x)p_{}^2]\varphi (x)+_k_k\varphi (x)=0.$$
(5.1)
Solutions of this equation control the perturbations of all supergravity fields. So far we have considered those modes with real momentum $`p_{}`$ that also have real $`p_+`$. Here we will see that in fact *all* modes of real $`p_{}`$ have real $`p_+`$. This is done by finding the general solution to (4.6) which, using a separation of variables, comes down to a second order o.d.e. with two known, linearly independent solutions. Note that we have ignored an arbitrary function of $`u`$ which could be added to the Ansätze above. That is, we could have taken

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=e^{i(p_{}vp_+u)}(x)+f(u),$$
(5.2)
and likewise for the other supergravity fields. This is a manifestation of the fact that $`u=\mathrm{constant}`$ is not a Cauchy surface, but a null surface. However, treating it as a substitute Cauchy surface only misses those modes which travel along constant $`u`$ , parallel to the wave front. The presence of such a function $`f(u)`$ is familiar in light-front studies  and is determined by the boundary condition that fields should vanish asymptotically, requiring $`f(u)=0`$.

Let us consider the simplest case, taking $`A_{ij}=\lambda _{(i)}\delta _{ij}`$ with the eigenvalues $`\lambda _{(i)}=\mu _{(i)}^2,i=1,\mathrm{},n`$ and $`\lambda _{(i)}=\mu _{(i)}^2,i=n+1,\mathrm{},D2`$. Separating variables as

$$(x)=F_1(x^1)\mathrm{}F_n(x^n)G_1(y^1)\mathrm{}G_{D2n}(y^{D2n}),$$
(5.3)
where we denote the directions associated with negative eigenvalues by $`\{y^1,\mathrm{},y^{D2n}\}`$, gives

$$F_{(i)}^{\prime \prime }+\left(E_{(i)}\mu _{(i)}^2p_{}^2(x^i)^2\right)F_{(i)}=0,G_{(i)}^{\prime \prime }+\left(E_{(i)}+\mu _{(i)}^2p_{}^2(y^i)^2\right)G_{(i)}=0,$$
(5.4)
where

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{D2}{}}E_{(i)}=p_+p_{}.$$
(5.5)
The equation for the $`F_{(i)}`$ is just the Schrödinger equation for a simple harmonic oscillator, whereas the equation for the $`G_{(i)}`$ has an *inverted* oscillator potential. Of course, this is the origin of the oscillatory and exponential behaviour in the geodesics and zero modes of the string as discussed above.

Asymptotically, as $`|x|,|y|\mathrm{}`$, we have

$$F_{(i)}(x^i)e^{\pm \frac{1}{2}\mu _{(i)}p_{}(x^i)^2},G_{(i)}(y^i)\frac{1}{\sqrt{y^i}}\mathrm{cos}\left(\frac{1}{2}\mu _{(i)}p_{}(y^i)^2\right),\frac{1}{\sqrt{y^i}}\mathrm{sin}\left(\frac{1}{2}\mu _{(i)}p_{}(y^i)^2\right),$$
(5.6)
for each $`F_{(i)}(x^i)`$ and $`G_{(i)}(y^i)`$. In the $`x^i`$ directions (with positive eigenvalues), the modes are either exponentially damped, or are exponentially growing — these are the normalizable and non–normalizable modes of . In the $`y^i`$ directions (with negative eigenvalues), however, the solutions are oscillatory, the two signs giving left– and right–moving plane waves. The former are easy to deal with: taking

$$F_{(i)}(x^i)=e^{\pm \frac{1}{2}\mu _{(i)}p_{}(x^i)^2}f_{(i)}(x^i),$$
(5.7)
gives

$$f_{(i)}^{\prime \prime }\pm 2\mu _{(i)}p_{}x^if_{(i)}^{}+(E_{(i)}\pm \mu _{(i)}p_{})f_{(i)}=0,$$
(5.8)
which is of course solved in terms of Hermite polynomials, up to an overall constant, giving a normalizable solution

$$F_{(i)}(x^i)=c_ne^{\frac{1}{2}\mu _{(i)}p_{}(x^i)^2}H_n(\sqrt{\mu _{(i)}p_{}}x^i),n=\frac{1}{2}\left(\frac{E_{(i)}}{\mu _{(i)}p_{}}1\right).$$
(5.9)
For real $`n`$, *i.e.*, for real $`E_{(i)}`$, these solutions furnish a complete basis of normalizable modes solving the equation of motion in the $`x^i`$ directions.

We now turn to consider the directions associated with negative eigenvalues. Upon defining $`z^i=y^i/\alpha _{(i)}`$, where $`\alpha _{(i)}^2=1/(2\mu _{(i)}|p_{}|)`$, the equation for the $`G_{(i)}`$ in (5.4) becomes

$$G_{(i)}^{\prime \prime }+\left(\frac{1}{4}(z^i)^2a_{(i)}\right)G_{(i)}=0,$$
(5.10)
where $`a_{(i)}=E_{(i)}\alpha _{(i)}^2`$. This can be solved in terms of parabolic cylinder functions giving, for each $`z^i`$, two independent solutions

$$\psi _a(z)=W(a,z),\chi _a(z)=W(a,z).$$
(5.11)
The first solution has the limiting behaviour

$`\psi _a(z\mathrm{})`$ $``$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2k}{z}}}\mathrm{cos}(z^2/4a\mathrm{log}z+\pi /4+\phi /2),`$ (5.12)
$`\psi _a(z\mathrm{})`$ $``$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{k|z|}}}\mathrm{sin}(z^2/4a\mathrm{log}|z|+\pi /4+\phi /2),`$ (5.13)
where $`\phi =\text{arg}\mathrm{\Gamma }(\frac{1}{2}+ia)`$ and $`k=\sqrt{1+\mathrm{exp}(2\pi a)}\mathrm{exp}(\pi a)`$, and the second behaves as

$`\chi _a(z\mathrm{})`$ $``$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{kz}}}\mathrm{sin}(z^2/4a\mathrm{log}z+\pi /4+\phi /2),`$ (5.14)
$`\chi _a(z\mathrm{})`$ $``$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2k}{|z|}}}\mathrm{sin}(z^2/4a\mathrm{log}|z|+\pi /4+\phi /2),`$ (5.15)
To show that these functions are orthogonal, we write (5.10) as

$$G_a^{\prime \prime }+\frac{1}{4}z^2G_a=aG_a,$$
(5.16)
where $`G_a`$ denotes either of the two functions in (5.11), multiply both sides by $`G_b`$ and integrate by parts, giving

$$_L^LG_a(z)G_b(z)dz=\frac{1}{(ab)}\left[G_bG_a^{}G_aG_b^{}\right]_L^L.$$
(5.17)
Taking the large $`L`$ limit and using the limiting behaviour discussed above, we find

$$_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\psi _a(z)\psi _b(z)dz=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\chi _a(z)\chi _b(z)dz=2\pi \sqrt{1+e^{2\pi a}}\delta (ab).$$
(5.18)
Substituting instead for $`G_a=\psi _a`$ and $`G_b=\chi _b`$ gives

$$_L^L\psi _a(z)\chi _b(z)dz=\frac{1}{(ab)}\left[\sqrt{\frac{k_b}{k_a}}\sqrt{\frac{k_a}{k_b}}\right]\mathrm{cos}[(ab)\mathrm{log}L].$$
(5.19)
For $`a=b+ϵ`$, with $`ϵ`$ small,

$$k_a=k_b+\pi ϵ\left[\frac{e^{2\pi b}}{\sqrt{1+e^{2\pi b}}}e^{\pi b}\right],$$
(5.20)
which shows that

$$_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\psi _a(z)\chi _b(z)dz=\frac{\pi e^{\pi a}}{\sqrt{1+e^{2\pi a}}}\delta _{ab},$$
(5.21)
where $`\delta _{ab}`$ is the Kronecker delta. We can then write an arbitrary function as

$$G(z)=da[\alpha (a)\psi _a(z)+\beta (a)\chi _a(z)]$$
(5.22)
where $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ are found using the orthogonality relations

$$\alpha (a)=\frac{1}{2\pi \sqrt{1+\mathrm{exp}(2\pi a)}}dz\psi _a(z)G(z),\beta (a)=\frac{1}{2\pi \sqrt{1+\mathrm{exp}(2\pi a)}}dz\chi _a(z)G(z).$$
(5.23)
To recap, in the directions associated with negative eigenvalues we found solutions in terms of cylinder functions and in the directions associated with positive eigenvalues we found solutions in terms of Hermite polynomials. If the parameters $`a`$ and $`n`$ are real then these form a complete basis and we may use the orthogonality of these functions to decompose any initial data set in terms of modes with real $`a`$, $`n`$. However, real $`a`$, $`n`$ implies real $`E_{(i)}`$ and with it, from (5.5), real $`p_+`$. That is, an arbitrary initial perturbation profile is composed of modes with real $`p_+`$, and so the system would seem to be stable.

To clarify the above, let us consider what happens in the more familiar case of a free scalar field with negative (mass)2:

$$_t^2\phi +_x^2\phi +_y^2\phi +m^2\phi =0.$$
(5.24)
To follow an analogue of the above argument we consider a mode of momentum $`p_x`$,

$$\phi (t,x,y)=A(y)\mathrm{cos}(\omega tp_xx)+B(y)\mathrm{cos}(\omega tp_xx),$$
(5.25)
giving

$$_y^2A(y)=(\omega ^2+m^2p_x^2)A(y)=p_y^2A(y),$$
(5.26)
with a similar equation for $`B(y)`$. The solutions to this are either exponential or trigonometric, depending on the reality of $`p_y`$ – for normalizable solutions we need to take real momentum, $`p_y`$, giving us trigonometric solutions. We are now able, using standard Fourier analysis, to decompose an arbitrary initial perturbation in terms of this basis of real $`p_x`$, $`p_y`$. This is the analogue of being able to write solutions to (4.6) in terms of cylinder functions with real $`a`$ and Hermite polynomials with real $`n`$. The difference now is that $`\omega ^2=\underset{¯}{p}^2m^2`$, so small momentum (long wavelength) states have imaginary $`\omega `$ whereas for the plane–wave we found that $`p_+`$ was always real.

One should be careful, however, since there are subtleties associated with the lack of a true Cauchy surface (some of which are discussed in ), although the same conclusions are reached in that work. As we have mentioned above, it would seem that evolving initial data from a $`u=\text{constant}`$ surface only misses modes which are unlikely to exhibit unstable behaviour, since they are unaffected by the wave.

## 6 Conclusions

The propagation of a closed string in the light–cone gauge on the vacuum plane–wave gives rise to world–sheet scalars with a tachyonic mass. In particular, the zero mode of the string, which determines the supergravity modes, suffers from such a mass term; this motivated the study of the classical stability of the supergravity solution. Although such spacetimes are supersymmetric, and supersymmetry is usually understood to imply stability, the standard arguments do not apply as the metrics are not asymptotically flat (they are Lorentzian symmetric spaces). It may turn out however that such methods could be modified to cover the plane–wave, and this would be an interesting avenue of research.

Taking the IIB equations of motion, perturbed around the vacuum plane wave, we have shown that in a gauge suited to the spacetime (light–cone gauge) the system boils down to the study of a single equation, (4.6). The simplicity of this equation allowed us to find its general solution in terms of known functions. Moreover, an arbitrary initial perturbation was seen to be decomposable in terms of modes with real $`p_+`$, corresponding to oscillatory motion, and thereby providing strong evidence for the stability of the spacetime.

Of course, one would like to be able to *prove* that instabilities do not exist, by showing that there are no normalizable solutions of (4.6) with imaginary $`p_+`$. Unfortunately, however, we have not been able to do this.

On general grounds, one might suspect that the presence of tachyonic worldsheet scalars would not give rise to any instabilities of the background, for the simple reason that the mass of these scalars is purely an artifact of choosing the light–cone gauge on the worldsheet . Choosing instead, for example, the static gauge, gives rise to a worldsheet theory of massless but interacting scalars . Indeed, simply changing from Brinkman to Rosen coordinates in the background spacetime has a similar effect on the worldsheet. It would be interesting to investigate how the interactions in different coordinates or gauges mimic the effect of a mass, tachyonic or otherwise.

Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to Don Marolf for many enlightening discussions, and for providing us with an early copy of the preprint , and to Simon Ross for a critical reading of this manuscript. DB would further like to thank Rob Myers and Moshe Rozali for interesting conversations, and is supported in part by NSERC. PMS is supported by a PPARC fellowship.


text:
# 1. Introduction

## 1. Introduction

It has often been stated that string theory is no more a theory of strings, since we have a plentiful set of objects of varied dimensionalities. However, fundamental strings still play a privileged role, in the sense that the dynamics of these objects should be formulated as various collective degrees of freedom in the theory. As far as we know, only legitimate descriptions of the dynamics of such branes are through strings, unless we are satisfied with some effective low-energy approximations as substitutes for exact description in principle. However, there have been a couple of proposals for exact gauge-theory models, which go beyond mere effective descriptions of branes and point towards possibilities of exact nonperturbative theories. One (and actually the first) of the most notable examples of such proposals has been the so-called M(atrix) theory advocated in , as a possible exact formulation of M-theory in a particular infinite momentum frame (IMF), in which the system is infinitely boosted along the 11-th compactified direction of M-theory. Unfortunately, however, it seems fair to assess that no substantial progress has been made in recent few years on M(atrix) theory, after initial explosion of papers until around 1998.

In this note, I would like to revisit Matrix theory from a viewpoint of its connection with supermembrane. Just as the fundamental strings play a special role in the ordinary perturbative string theory, it is expected that supermembrane would play a pivotal role in the quest for the fundamental degrees of freedom in M-theory. In fact, it is well known that M(atrix) theory can be interpreted as a particular (regularized) realization of quantum supermembrane theory by discretizing membrane degrees of freedom in the form of matrices. On the other hand, in the usual interpretation, the fundamental strings of type IIA string theory should be elevated to supermembranes, which are wrapped along the 11-th direction. Combining these viewpoints, we expect that IIA superstrings should also be directly related to M(atrix) theory. It is somewhat surprising, however, that these two very familiar viewpoints, IMF and wrapped supermembrane, have never been formulated in a really coherent and unified framework. Here I would like to fill this gap with a hope that such a work might shed new light on this important question and would stimulate further investigations along this line.

We organize the present note as follows. First in section 2 we briefly recapitulate the original proposals of Matrix theory and Matrix-string theory. In section 3, we present a new derivation of Matrix-string theory  without relying on string duality arguments, as a new direct regularization of wrapped supermembrane, following a previous work . Then, in section 4, we discuss the decompactification limit of our formulation of Matrix-string theory and show that it leads to the same Matrix-theory action as the one we have from the original BFSS proposal. This shows that two apparent different ways of matrix regularizations with different directions of boosting to light velocity lead to the same theory in the decompactification limit of M-theory. It seems that these observations shed a useful new light on the interpretation of both string and membrane. In the final section, we conclude with considerations on the nature of covariantized matrix (string) theories.

## 2. Revisiting Matrix-theory proposal

Let us begin by recalling the BFSS proposal. There were two key backgrounds for this proposal: On the one hand, it has been well known that the low-energy effective action for the dynamics of D-particles is the maximally supersymmetric quantum mechanics with 9-independent matrix coordinates $`X^a`$ $`(a=1,2,\mathrm{},9)`$, which can be obtained by dimensional reduction from the maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in 9+1 dimensional space-time. On the other hand, essentially the same model can be derived as a regularized version of supermembrane in 11 dimensions in the light-cone gauge, as has been known from the work . The action density takes the forms, depending on these two interpretations, respectively, as

$$\mathrm{Tr}\left(\frac{1}{2g_s\mathrm{}_s}D_\tau X^aD_\tau X^a+i\theta ^TD_\tau \theta +\frac{1}{\mathrm{}_s^5}[X^a,X^b]^2\frac{1}{\mathrm{}_s^2}\theta ^T\gamma _a[\theta ,X^a]\right),$$
(2.1)
or

$$\mathrm{Tr}\left(\frac{1}{2R}D_\tau X^aD_\tau X^a+i\theta ^TD_\tau \theta +\frac{R}{4\mathrm{}_P^6}[X^a,X^b]^2\frac{R}{\mathrm{}_P^3}\theta ^T\gamma _a[\theta ,X^a]\right),$$
(2.2)
where the first one is written using the standard string coupling $`g_s`$, in terms of which the mass of D-particle is $`1/g_s\mathrm{}_s`$, with string length constant $`\mathrm{}_s`$, while, in the second, using 11 dimensional radius $`R=g_s\mathrm{}_s`$ and 11 dimensional Planck length $`\mathrm{}_P=g_s^{1/3}\mathrm{}_s`$.

The low-energy approximation is justified when the massive modes of the fundamental open strings attached to D-particles are decoupled, that is to say, when the typical energy scale $`E`$ in D-particle dynamics is much lower than the excitation energy $`1/\mathrm{}_s`$ of strings. The typical energy of open strings connecting D-particles is roughly of the order of the distances among D-particles when the velocity is sufficiently small. Hence, we can justify the low-energy description if the string coupling is sufficiently small and the distances among D-particles are small compared with the string length,

$$r\mathrm{}_s,g_s1,$$
(2.3)
which is consistently implemented since the characteristic spatial length scale of the system is equal to the 11-dimensional Planck length $`\mathrm{}_P`$.

On the other hand, the same theory written in the second form as a regularization  of supermembrane could be a good constructive definition of the quantum supermembrane theory when the size of matrices $`N\times N`$ is sufficiently large, $`N\mathrm{}.`$

The proposal of Matrix theory can be regarded as the unification of these two viewpoints on the same action. Supposing that the (total) momentum of the system of $`N`$ D-particles along the 11-th direction is sufficiently large compared with other directions, we can identify it with the longitudinal momentum of the light-cone frame as

$$\frac{N}{R}=P^{11}P^+=(P^0+P^{11})/2.$$
(2.4)
Indeed, for $`P^{11}>0`$, the Hamiltonian of this system can be written in the form

$$H(=P^{})=\frac{(P^a)^2}{2P^+}+\mathrm{}.$$
(2.5)
where $`P^a`$ are the transverse momentum corresponding to the center of mass coordinate of $`N`$ D-particles. Anti-D-particles corresponding to $`P^{11}<0`$ are decoupled in this limit. For finite $`N`$, $`g_s`$ must be sufficiently small for the validity of (2.4). This is consistent with (2.3) . This means that the second interpretation as the light-cone description of 11 dimensional M-theory may be meaningful even for finite $`N`$, irrespectively of the membrane picture, in the limit of small string coupling. Furthermore, we can keep the validity of the relation (2.4) when $`g_s`$ becomes large if we assume sufficiently large $`N`$. This suggests that the constructive definition of supermembrane theory in the light-like frame could in turn be interpreted as the theory of large number ($`=N`$) of D-particles.

Obviously, this is only suggestive and never shows anything which are really required to justify that the theory defines an exact description of D-particle dynamics. A crucial question is whether the process of taking large $`N`$ limit recovers the whole stringy degrees (or their appropriate extension for large $`g_s`$) of freedom, which must be essential for the emergence of consistent quantum theory of gravity. On dimensional grounds, we can expect, remembering the relation $`\mathrm{}_P=g_s^{1/3}\mathrm{}_s`$, that the string excitations might somehow be eliminated since the string scale can be taken to be infinitely small compared with the 11D Planck length in the limit of large string coupling. However, in order to utilize this feature, we need some concrete theoretical framework which is defined in 11 dimensions as an extension of string theory. Such a theory must exhibit correct stringy degrees of freedom in the 10D limit and is desirably to be consistent with 11 dimensional supergravity in the low-energy 11D limit. But it would almost amount to constructing M-theory!

Thus, instead of directly approaching this question, we can ask from a slightly different angle the following question: How, if any, is the above picture related to another familiar picture that the fundamental string should be a wrapped supermembrane, and how is it related with the above matrix model? In ref. , we have discussed this question by studying a natural regularization for wrapped supermembrane. We here briefly summarize this result.

## 3. Matrix string from wrapped supermembrane

We start from the action of supermembrane in the light-cone gauge .

$$A=\frac{1}{\mathrm{}_P^3}𝑑\tau _0^{2\pi L}𝑑\sigma _0^{2\pi L}𝑑\rho ,$$

$$w^1=\frac{1}{2}(D_0X^a)^2+i\overline{\psi }\gamma _{}D_0\psi \frac{1}{4}(\{X^a,X^b\})^2+i\overline{\psi }\gamma _{}\mathrm{\Gamma }_a\{X^a,\psi \},$$
(3.6)
with

$$\{X^a,X^b\}=w^1(_\sigma X^a_\rho X^b_\rho X^a_\sigma X^b)D_0X^a=_\tau X^a\{A_0,X^a\}.$$

The density function $`w`$ is introduced in the gauge fixing process such that the longitudinal momentum $`P^+(\sigma ,\rho )`$ satisfies $`P^+(\sigma ,\rho )=P^+w(\sigma ,\rho )/L^2`$. The time coordinate $`\tau `$ is related to the light-cone time by

$$\mathrm{}_M^3P^+\tau /(2\pi L)^2=X^+,$$
(3.7)
such that the total center of mass (transverse) momentum $`P^a`$ contributes to the Hamiltonian in the standard form,

$$P^{}dX^+=\left(\frac{(P^a)^2}{2P^+}+\mathrm{}\right)dX^+.$$

The length parameter $`L`$ is arbitrary of which the theory is independent, as can be checked easily by performing suitable rescaling. It is well known that this action can be regarded as a $`(0+1)`$-dimensional gauge theory whose gauge group is the group of area-preserving diffeomorphisms (APD) of two-dimensional space $`(\sigma ,\rho )`$. In fact, the Gauss-law constraint derived from this action by the variation with respect to the gauge field $`A_0`$ gives the constraint corresponding to the area-preserving diffeomorphism (APD) which is the residual reparametrization symmetry $`\delta X^a=\{\mathrm{\Lambda },X\},\delta A_0=_0\mathrm{\Lambda }+\{\mathrm{\Lambda },A_0\},etc`$, after fixing to the light-cone gauge. More precisely, the Gauss-law constraint,

$$\{D_0X^a,X^a\}+i\{\overline{\psi },\gamma _{}\psi \}=0,$$
(3.8)
is the integrability condition for the equation determining the longitudinal coordinate $`X^{}`$.

We can now assume that one, say 9-th, of the 9 transverse directions ($`a,b,\mathrm{},=1,2,\mathrm{},9`$) to be the compactified M-theory direction of radius $`R=g_s\mathrm{}_s`$. It is easy to check that if we simply make the ‘double-dimensional reduction’ by ignoring the dependence on the world-volume coordinate along the wrapped direction (which we choose to be $`\rho `$), the action just reduces to the standard Green-Schwarz action of IIA theory in the light-cone gauge. This is consistent with the familiar statement that IIA string is identified with wrapped supermembrane in the limit of small compactification radius. However, for any finite $`g_s`$, it is not justifiable to neglect the $`\rho `$-dependence. The reason is that there is no mas gap which would characterize the compactification on the world volume. Remember that the usual kinetic term of the form $`(_\rho X)^2`$ does not exist in the action. Therefore it is absolutely necessary in quantum theory to examine the form of the action without making the naive reduction.

Let us call the 9-th transverse coordinate $`Y`$. Wrapping can be explicitly taken into account by making a shift of $`Y`$ as

$$Y\rho +Y,$$
(3.9)
and assuming that the redefined $`Y`$ as well as other components and fermion coordinates are periodic in $`\rho `$. By performing the rescaling $`(\sigma ,\tau ,\rho )R(\sigma ,\tau ,\rho )`$ and choosing $`L`$ to be identified with $`R`$, the above shift amounts to making the following replacements in the action

$$\frac{1}{2}(D_0Y)^2R^2\frac{1}{2}(_0Y_\sigma A\frac{1}{R}\{A,Y\})^2,$$

$$\frac{1}{2}\{X^i,Y\}^2R^2\frac{1}{2}(_\sigma X^i\frac{1}{R}\{Y,X^i\})^2,$$

$$\psi ^T\mathrm{\Gamma }_9\{Y,\psi \}R^1\psi ^T\mathrm{\Gamma }_9(_\sigma \psi \frac{1}{R}\{Y,\psi \}).$$

Then the action now takes almost (but not quite) the form of an $`(1+1)`$-dimensional gauge theory with gauge group APD,

$$A=\frac{1}{\mathrm{}_s^2}d\tau _0^{2\pi }d\sigma _0^{2\pi }d\rho [\frac{1}{2}F_{0,\sigma }^2+\frac{1}{2}(D_0X^i)^2\frac{1}{2}(D_\sigma ^YX^i)^2$$

$$\frac{1}{4R^2}\{X^i,X^j\}^2+\mathrm{}],$$
(3.10)
in the sense that we now have the covariant derivative for both $`\tau `$ and $`\sigma `$ directions and the field strength $`F_{0,\sigma }`$. The peculiarity preventing to be the gauge theory in its strict sense is that the would-be internal space and base space overlap along the $`\sigma `$-direction. Here the transverse indices $`(i,j,\mathrm{},)`$ run over only 8 directions, since the 9-th direction $`Y`$ turned into the gauge field of $`\sigma `$-direction.

What we have found in  For further works, appeared after the conference, discussing this construction from somewhat different angles, see , .  is that there is a natural regularization which converts the above action into that of Matrix-string theory . The rule for making correspondence between matrix string and membrane is exemplified by the following table

| Long string of matrix string theory | Doubly compactified membrane |
| --- | --- |
| $`\mathrm{Tr}\frac{1}{N}_0^{2\pi }𝑑\theta `$ | $`_0^{2\pi }𝑑\sigma \frac{1}{2\pi }_0^{2\pi }𝑑\rho `$ |
| $`i\frac{N}{2\pi }[A,B]`$ | $`\{A,B\}`$ |
| $`A_k\mathrm{}(\theta )`$ | $`\frac{d\rho }{2\pi }e^{in\rho }A(\sigma ,\rho )`$ |
| $`k\mathrm{}`$ | $`n`$ |
| $`\theta `$ | $`\sigma =\frac{(k+\mathrm{}2)\pi }{N}+\frac{\theta }{N}`$ |

Thus the basic idea is the identification of the nonzero Fourier modes along the compactified direction $`\rho `$ with the off-diagonal matrix elements of $`(1+1)`$-dimensional matrix field $`A_k\mathrm{}(\theta ,\tau )`$ and, simultaneously, the matrix elements with fixed $`k\mathrm{}`$ with $`N`$ bits of strings. For more detail, see our original paper. Based on this idea, we can establish the general formula connecting matrix-string and membrane:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{N}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\theta \mathrm{Tr}\left(M^{(1)}(\theta )M^{(2)}(\theta )\mathrm{}M^{(\mathrm{})}(\theta )\right)}`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi }}{\displaystyle 𝑑\rho 𝑑\sigma \mathrm{exp}\left[i\frac{\pi }{N}\underset{\mathrm{}i>j1}{}(_{\sigma _j}_{\rho _i}_{\rho _j}_{\sigma _i})\right]}`$ (3.11)
$`\times M^{(1)}(\sigma _1,\rho _1)\mathrm{}M^{(\mathrm{})}(\sigma _{\mathrm{}},\rho _{\mathrm{}})|_{\sigma _i=\sigma ,\rho _i=\rho }.`$
As a special case of this formula, we have, say,

$$\frac{1}{N}𝑑\theta \mathrm{STr}\left([M^{(1)}(\theta ),M^{(2)}(\theta )][M^{(3)}(\theta ),M^{(4)}(\theta )]M^{(3)}(\theta )\mathrm{}M^{(\mathrm{})}(\theta )\right)$$

$$=\frac{1}{2\pi }(2\pi /N)^2𝑑\sigma 𝑑\rho \{M^{(1)}(\sigma ,\rho ),M^{(2)}(\sigma ,\rho )\}\{M^{(3)}(\sigma ,\rho ),M^{(4)}(\sigma ,\rho )\}$$

$$\times M^{(3)}(\sigma ,\rho )\mathrm{}M^{(\mathrm{})}(\sigma ,\rho )(1+O(1/N^2))$$
(3.12)
in the large $`N`$ limit, where the symmetrized trace (STr) means to treat the commutators on the left hand side as single matrices.

These prescription allows us to regularize the membrane action (3.10) in the matrix form as, up to $`O(1/N^2)`$ corrections,

$`A={\displaystyle \frac{(2\pi )^2L}{\mathrm{}_P^3}}`$ $`{\displaystyle }d\tau {\displaystyle \frac{2\pi }{N}}{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}d\theta \mathrm{Tr}({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}F_{0,\theta }^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(D_0X^i)^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}N^2(D_\theta X^i)^2`$ (3.13)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4L^2}}({\displaystyle \frac{N}{2\pi }})^2[X^i,X^j]^2+i\psi ^TD_0\psi Ni\psi ^T\mathrm{\Gamma }_9D_\theta \psi {\displaystyle \frac{1}{L}}{\displaystyle \frac{N}{2\pi }}\psi ^T\mathrm{\Gamma }_i[X^i,\psi ]),`$
where

$$D_\theta X^i=_\theta X^ii\frac{1}{2\pi L}[Y,X^i],$$
(3.14)
$$D_0X^i=_\tau X^ii\frac{N}{2\pi L}[A,X^i],$$
(3.15)
$$F_{0,\theta }=_\tau YN_\theta Ai\frac{N}{2\pi L}[A,Y],$$
(3.16)
and similarly for fermion variables. By performing the redefinition

$$\tau \tau /N,LL/2\pi ,\psi \sqrt{N}\psi ,$$

the $`N`$ dependence is eliminated and the action is reduced to the standard matrix-string theory action. Recall $`L=R`$ and $`R/\mathrm{}_P^3=1/\mathrm{}_s^2`$. Assuming that the physical light-cone time $`X^+`$ must be independent on $`N`$, this rescaling of the time coordinate requires, by the relation (3.7), that the total longitudinal momentum $`P^+`$ scales with $`N`$ as

$$P^+NP^+$$
(3.17)
which coincides with the correct scaling for the matrix-string theory interpretation.

The merit of this new derivation of matrix-string theory is that we have not assumed any string dualities (both S and T dualities) which have been invoked as a justification of this model in the original proposal . The usual method  of performing T-duality for matrix models is based on the low-energy approximation where higher string modes are not taken into account explicitly. Also, S-duality still of course remains as an unproven conjecture. Thus, due to our new formulation, the matrix-string theory can now be regarded as a natural regularization of supermembrane theory on an equal footing as Matrix theory, independently of the string duality arguments. Comparing with the matrix theory, the matrix-string action has a more direct connection with the ordinary perturbative formulation of IIA strings, in such a way that D-particles (and possibly higher D-branes) can also be clearly identified as various conserved charges. In particular, the D-particle charge, being the momentum along the compactified 9-th direction, is related to the electric flux.

## 4. Matrix theory from matrix string

We now come to the question how IIA string, as wrapped supermembrane, is related to Matrix theory which has been obtained as another possible regularization of supermembrane boosted along the compactified M-theory direction without wrapping.

Before going to that, let us briefly recall how the matrix-string action (3.13) reduces to IIA string theory in the 10D limit $`g_s0`$. Since, (3.13) being the action of an (1+1)-dimensional gauge theory, the coupling constant is inversely proportional to $`R=g_s\mathrm{}_s`$, the 10D limit is an IR limit (or strong coupling limit) of the gauge theory. If we fix the string scale $`\mathrm{}_s`$, 11 dimensional Planck scale becomes negligible in the limit. It is then reasonable to expect that the quantum fluctuations are restricted to the so-called flat directions where the potential vanishes,

$$[X^i,X^j]0\text{for all transverse directions }(i,j).$$
(4.18)
This is the orbifold ($`(𝐑^8)^N/S_N`$) 2D CFT  which has been argued to be equivalent, in the large $`N`$ limit, with the Green-Schwarz formulation of IIA string theory. As the above correspondence between matrix-string action and the wrapped membrane shows, this reduction to diagonal matrices is just equivalent to the simple KK reduction ignoring higher Fourier modes of membrane excitations along the wrapped direction. Therefore rigorous justification of this reduction for arbitrarily small but nonzero string coupling should be very nontrivial , owing to the absence of mass gap associated with this reduction or wrapping.

Now we consider the opposite limit $`R\mathrm{}`$ (strong string coupling), which is, in the language of 2D gauge theory, the weak or UV limit. From the viewpoint of M-theory, we have to fix the M-theory scale $`\mathrm{}_P=g_s^{1/3}\mathrm{}_s`$. Thus the string scale now becomes infinite $`\mathrm{}_s=g_s^{1/3}\mathrm{}_P0`$. Since in our formulation the matrix-string action is derived entirely within the logic of 11 dimensions and is connected, with the proviso as being warned above, smoothly to string theory, it can provide a concrete intermediate framework which we argued to be necessary for discussing the M-theory limit of matrix models. That is still an intermediate step in the sense that we have not yet any guarantee for the compatibility of matrix-string action with 11D supergravity.

Performing the rescaling $`\tau (\mathrm{}_P/\mathrm{}_s^2)\tau `$, the action is rewritten as

$$𝑑\tau _0^{2\pi }𝑑\theta \frac{\mathrm{}_P}{\mathrm{}_s^4}\mathrm{Tr}\left(\frac{1}{2}F_{0,\theta }^2+\frac{1}{2}(D_0X^i)^2\frac{1}{2}(D_\theta X^i)^2+\frac{\mathrm{}_s^4}{4\mathrm{}_P^6}[X^i,X^j]^2+\mathrm{}\right)$$
(4.19)
with

$$F_{0,\theta }=\frac{\mathrm{}_s^2}{\mathrm{}_P}_0A_\theta _\theta A_0\frac{i\mathrm{}_s^2}{\mathrm{}_P^3}[A_\theta ,A_0],$$
(4.20)
$$D_0X^i=\frac{\mathrm{}_s^2}{\mathrm{}_P}_0\frac{i\mathrm{}_s^2}{\mathrm{}_P^3}[A_0,X^i],$$
(4.21)
$$D_\theta X^i=_\theta X^i\frac{i\mathrm{}_s^2}{\mathrm{}_P^3}[A_\theta ,X^i],etc.$$
(4.22)
Let us adopt the axial gauge $`_\theta A_\theta =0`$. Now, from the above form of the action, we can see easily that, in the limit $`\mathrm{}_s0`$ with $`\mathrm{}_P`$ kept fixed, the quantum fluctuations are restricted to those satisfying

$$_\theta X^i=_\theta A_0=_\theta \psi =0.$$
(4.23)
Together with our gauge condition, this shows that in the M-theory limit we can ignore $`\theta `$-dependence of the matrix variables. Thus the effective action for the remaining fluctuations is given by

$$\frac{2\pi }{\mathrm{}_P}𝑑\tau \mathrm{Tr}\left(\frac{1}{2}(D_0X^a)^2+\frac{1}{4\mathrm{}_P^4}[X^a,X^b]^2+\mathrm{}\right),$$
(4.24)
where now

$$D_0X^a=_0X^a\frac{i}{\mathrm{}_P^2}[A_0,X^a],etc,$$

with the indices $`a,b,\mathrm{}`$ running over 9 coordinates, including $`A_\theta =X^9`$. Of course, the large $`N`$-limit must be understood for this action, since the model can be justified only in the large $`N`$-limit in the 10D limit. Intuitively, the situation is as follows: As wrapped membrane is stretched infinitely along the wrapped direction, its size with respect to 10 dimensional world is infinitely squeezed and the resulting thin tube along the wrapped direction is torn off into an infinite number of ‘bits’ of gravitons represented by the matrices $`X_a`$.

The above result (4.24) obviously takes the similar form as that of Matrix theory. In fact, they are identical if one performs the rescaling $`\tau (\mathrm{}_P/R)\tau ,X^aX^a`$ to the standard form of the Matrix-theory action. The necessity of this rescaling is related to the fact that the typical temporal and spatial scales characterizing the Matrix-theory action are $`\tau _cg_s^{2/3}\mathrm{}_P`$ and $`\mathrm{}_P`$, respectively. This conforms to the stringy uncertainty relation, $`\mathrm{\Delta }T\mathrm{\Delta }X\mathrm{}_s^2=\mathrm{}_P^3/R`$, of space-time . The rescaling $`\tau (\mathrm{}_P/R)\tau `$ is just appropriate for converting the temporal scale to the Planck scale.

## 5. Towards covariantized matrix theories

Now what should we learn from this new derivation of Matrix-theory? First, in the case of wrapped supermembrane, the 9-th transverse direction is identified with the compactified M-theory direction before taking the 11D limit $`R\mathrm{}`$. On the other hand, in the original BFSS proposal, the M-theory direction is the longitudinal direction along which the system is boosted to IMF. Thus in the latter case, the transverse directions are completely orthogonal to the M-theory direction. Yet, we found that in the decompactification limit, both give the same theory. This may be an indication that Matrix theory in the decompactification limit is Lorentz covariant as one hopes.

Second, as we have already emphasized, our 11D derivation of matrix-string theory can play the role of a unified framework for two different but mutually complementary pictures, wrapped supermembrane and IMF along the compactified direction, on the relation between 10D and 11D physics. From this viewpoint, a very important next step seems to construct the covariantized version of matrix-string theory. In the rest of this note, let us briefly compare the possible directions of covariantized matrix models.

We call the direct covariantization of Matrix theory possibility ‘pIMF’, and the indirect covariantization through wrapped membrane picture possibility ‘pWM’, respectively. In pIMF, we require the existence of some generalized matrix variables representing the dynamics of D-particles in general Lorentz frame, such that they reduce, under the infinite boost along the compactified direction, to the usual matrices of the standard light-cone formulation. Such generalized matrix variables must necessarily represent an infinite number of both D-particles and anti-D-particles simultaneously, and the generic elements of the generalized matrix variables must correspond to massless modes of open strings connecting D-and/or anti-D-particles. However, for the open strings connecting between D-and anti-D-particles, supersymmetry is spontaneously broken. If we include only the massless modes of strings, the representation of spontaneously broken IIA supersymmetry must be nonlinear, since the number of massless modes are different between space-time bosons and fermions for those strings corresponding to a ‘wrong’ GSO projection. Therefore, in the approach pIMF, the possibility of constructing covariant Matrix theory would crucially depend on obtaining an appropriate concrete nonlinear realization of IIA supersymmetry. From the viewpoint of continuum membrane theory, it seems natural to adopt a supermembrane action without $`\kappa `$-symmetry. The action is required to reduce to the standard action constructed by requiring $`\kappa `$-symmetry in the light-cone gauge, when the system is boosted to IMF. Thus some of the (generalized) matrix degrees of freedom must be decoupled dynamically in the IMF limit. One of the puzzles in pursuing this possibility is that Lorentz transformation would in general involve the change of the physical degrees of freedom. If we boost the system in the positive direction along the M-theory direction, some ($`\mathrm{\Delta }N`$) of the anti-D-particles turn into D-particles. From the viewpoint of the effective low-energy theory, this implies that the effective gauge group changes as SU($`N_+`$)$`\times `$SU($`N_{}`$) $``$ SU($`N_++\mathrm{\Delta }N`$) $`\times `$SU($`N_{}\mathrm{\Delta }N`$), which leads to the corresponding change with respect to the numbers of gauge fields and massless fermions. It seems very nontrivial to achieve this in any manifestly Lorentz covariant theory for large but finite $`N`$. Hopefully, this may be a hint in looking for the correct “generalized” matrix variables.

In the approach pWM, on the other hand, the situation is very different. In this case, both D-particles and anti-D-particles can be taken into account by considering states with positive and negative momenta along the 9-th direction. The spontaneously broken susy would be realized in the presence of whole massive string modes by the emergence of world sheet fermion fields with non-standard boundary conditions for fermionic Green-Schwarz (GS) open strings connected to D-and anti-D-particles, as discussed in  in detail. From the viewpoint of supermembrane, the action must be $`\kappa `$-symmetric, since in the 10D limit it should reduce to the ordinary GS IIA string. The broken susy must automatically appear in the sectors with coexisting D-and anti-D-particles in the above sense. In the 11D limit with appropriate large $`N`$ limit, the theory must be equivalent with what one arrives in the approach pIMF. We do not see any fundamental conceptual problem, in contrast to the approach pIFM, in applying our new method of regularizing wrapped membranes in the possible covariant formulations, though there appear some technical subtleties in realizing the (anti) D-particles in terms of the picture of wrapped membrane. A promising framework along this direction seems to be the recent interesting proposal  by Berkovits using the pure-spinor formalism. Once a reasonable covariantized matrix-string theory could be constructed, the next question would be whether it gives 11D supergravity correctly in the long-distance limit. Assuming that its 10D limit describes the correct perturbative IIA string theory, it seems very plausible that the correct covariant 11D extension is nothing but 11D supergravity, although no general theorem of this sort is known. We hope to return to this challenging question in the near future.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank the organizers of the 3rd Sakharov International Conference on Physics for inviting me. The present work is partially supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 12440060 and No. 13135205) from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture.