D-PARTICLE DYNAMICS AND BOUND STATES

Abstract

We study the low energy effective theory describing the dynamics of D-particles. This corresponds to the quantum-mechanical system obtained by dimensional reduction of (9+1)-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory to 0+1 dimensions and can be interpreted as the nonrelativistic limit of the Born-Infeld action. We study the system of two like-charged D-particles and find evidence for the existence of non-BPS states whose mass grows like λ1/3 over the BPS mass. We give a string interpretation of this phenomenon in terms of a linear potential generated by strings stretching from the two D-particles. Some comments on the possible relations to black hole entropy and elevendimensional supergravity are also given.