Instantons of Type IIB Supergravity in Ten Dimensions

Abstract

A family of SO(10) symmetric instanton solutions in Type IIB supergravity is developed. The instanton of least action is a candidate for the low-energy, semiclassical approximation to the {D=--1} brane. Unlike a previously published solution,[GGP] this admits an interpretation as a tunneling amplitude between perturbatively degenerate asymptotic states, but with action twice that found previously. A number of associated issues are discussed such as the relation between the magnetic and electric pictures, an inversion symmetry of the dilaton and the metric, the $R\times S^9$ topology of the background, and some properties of the solution in an "instanton frame" corresponding to a Lagrangian in which the dilaton's kinetic energy vanishes.