MEMBRANE VACUUM AS A TYPE II SUPERCONDUCTOR

Abstract

We study a functional field theory of membranes coupled to a rank-three tensor gauge potential. We show that gauge field radiative corrections lead to membrane condensation which turns the gauge field into a massive spin-0 field. This is the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism for membranes. An analogy is also drawn with a type-II superconductor. The ground state of the system consists of a two-phase medium in which the superconducting background condensate is “pierced” by four-dimensional domains, or “bags”, of non-superconducting vacuum. Bags are bounded by membranes whose physical thickness is of the order of the inverse mass acquired by the gauge field.