Scalar Absorption and the Breaking of the World Volume Conformal Invariance

Abstract

We investigate a version of fixed scalars for non-dilatonic branes which correspond to dilatations of the brane world-volume. We obtain a cross-section whose world-volume interpretation falls out naturally from an investigation of the breaking of conformal invariance by the irrelevant Born-Infeld corrections to Yang-Mills theory. From the same irrelevant world-volume operator we obtain the leading correction to the cross-sections of minimal scalars. This correction can be obtained in supergravity via an improved matching of inner and outer solutions to the minimal wave equation.