Giant gravitons as probes of gauged supergravity

Abstract

We consider giant graviton probes of 11-dimensional supergravity solutions which are lifts of arbitrary solutions of 4-dimensional U(1)^4 and 7-dimensional U(1)^2 gauged supergravities. We show that the structure of the lift ansatze is sufficient to explicitly find a solution for the embedding and motion of the M5- or M2-brane in the internal space. The brane probe action then reduces to that of a massive charged particle in the gauged supergravity, demonstrating that probing the gauged supergravity with such particles is equivalent to the more involved 11-dimensional brane probe calculation. As an application of this we use these particles to probe superstar geometries which are conjectured to be sourced by giant gravitons.