Branes probing black holes

Abstract

We consider a brane moving close to a large number of coincident branes. We compare the calculation of the effective action using the gauge theory living on the brane and the calculation using the supergravity approximation. We discuss some general features about the correspondence between large N gauge theories and black holes. Then we do a one loop calculation which applies for extremal and near extremal black holes. We comment on the expected results for higher loop calculations. We make some comments on the Matrix theory interpretation of these results.