D-brane Bremsstrahlung

Abstract

We study the dynamics of ultrarelativistic D-branes. The dominant phenomenon is bremsstrahlung: mild acceleration induced by closed string interactions triggers extremely rapid energy loss through radiation of massless closed strings. After characterizing bremsstrahlung from a general k-dimensional extended object in a D-dimensional spacetime, we incorporate effects specific to D-branes, including velocity-dependent forces and open string pair creation. We then show that dissipation due to bremsstrahlung can substantially alter the dynamics in DBI inflation.