The RR field or Ramond–Ramond field is a gauge field appearing in 10-dimensional type II supergravity.
Mathematically the RR field on a space is a cocycle in differential K-theory – or rather, in full generality, in twisted differential KR-theory subject to a self-dual higher gauge field constrained encoded by a quadratic form defining an 11-dimensional Chern-Simons theory on twisted differential KR cocycles.
Accordingly, the field strength of the RR field, i.e. the image of the differential K-cocycle in deRham cohomology, is an inhomogeneous even or odd differential form
The components of this are sometimes called the RR forms.
In the presence of a nontrivial Kalb–Ramond field the RR field is twisted: a cocycle in the corresponding twisted K-theory.
Moreover, the RR field is constrained to be a self-dual differential K-cocycle in a suitable sense.
electric-magnetic duality of D-branes/RR-fields in type II string theory:
electric charge | magnetic charge |
---|---|
D0-brane | D6-brane |
D1-brane | D5-brane |
D2-brane | D4-brane |
D3-brane | D3-brane |
The RR field derives its name from the way it shows up when the supergravity theory in question is derived as an effective background theory in string theory. From the sigma-model perspective of the string the RR field is the condensate of fermionic 0-mode excitations of the type II superstring for a particular choice of boundary conditons called the Ramond boundary condititions. Since these boundary conditions have to be chosen for two spinor components, the name appears twice.
Table of branes appearing in supergravity/string theory (for classification see at brane scan).
Early discussion in relation to D-branes:
Review in the context of the K-theory classification of D-brane charge:
Discussion of the NSR string perturbation theory in RR-field background:
self-duality for pregeometric RR-fields – references
The self-dual higher gauge field nature (see there for more) in terms of a quadratic form on differential K-theory is discussed originally around
and (Freed 00) for type I superstring theory, and for type II superstring theory in
Edward Witten, Duality Relations Among Topological Effects In String Theory, JHEP 0005:031 (2000) [arXiv:hep-th/9912086, doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2000/05/032]
Daniel Freed, Michael Hopkins, On Ramond-Ramond fields and K-theory, JHEP 0005 (2000) 044 [arXiv:hep-th/0002027]
Duiliu-Emanuel Diaconescu, Gregory Moore, Edward Witten, Gauge Theory, and a Derivation of K-Theory from M-Theory, Adv. Theor. Math. Phys. 6 (2003) 1031-1134 [arXiv:hep-th/0005090], summarised in A Derivation of K-Theory from M-Theory [arXiv:hep-th/0005091]
with more refined discussion in twisted differential KR-theory in
See at orientifold for more on this. The relation to 11d Chern-Simons theory is made manifest in
Review is in
Discussion of Lagrangian densities for type II supergravity making the nature of the pregeometric RR-fields and their self-duality manifest:
Gianguido Dall'Agata, Kurt Lechner, Mario Tonin, , Supergravity: Lorentz-invariant actions and duality, JHEP 9807:017 (1998) [arXiv:hep-th/9806140, doi:10.1088/1126-6708/1998/07/017]
Eric Bergshoeff, Renata Kallosh, Tomas Ortin, Diederik Roest, Antoine Van Proeyen, New Formulations of D=10 Supersymmetry and D8-O8 Domain Walls, Class. Quant. Grav. 18 (2001) 3359-3382 [arXiv:hep-th/0103233, doi:10.1088/0264-9381/18/17/303]
Karapet Mkrtchyan, Fridrich Valach, Democratic actions for type II supergravities, Phys.Rev.D 107 6 (2023) 066027 [arXiv:2207.00626, doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.107.066027]
An argument that RR-charge may occur in irrational ratios is due to
In a sequence of followup articles, authors found this problematic and tried to make sense of it:
In this article it was argued that the D0-brane charge arising from the integral over the D2-brane of the pullback of the B field is cancelled by the bulk contributions, but in this calculation it was implicitly assumed that the gauge field is constant. (from Zhou 01)
Peter Rajan, D2-brane RR-charge on , Phys.Lett. B533 (2002) 307-312 (arXiv:hep-th/0111245)
Jian-Ge Zhou, D-branes in B Fields, Nucl.Phys. B607 (2001) 237-246 (arXiv:hep-th/0102178)
Observation that this paradox is resolved under Hypothesis H, at least for fractional D-branes:
Last revised on June 24, 2023 at 09:57:09. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.