Scattering ripples from branes

Abstract

A novel probe of D-brane dynamics is via scattering of a high energy ripple traveling along an attached string. The inelastic processes in which the D-brane is excited through emission of an additional attached string is considered. Corresponding amplitudes can be found by factorizing a one-loop amplitude derived in this paper. This one-loop amplitude is shown to have the correct structure, but extraction of explicit expressions for the scattering amplitudes is difficult. It is conjectured that the exponential growth of available string states with energy leads to an inclusive scattering rate that becomes large at the string scale, due to excitation of the ``string halo,'' and meaning that such probes do not easily see structure at shorter scales.