Massive type IIA string theory cannot be strongly coupled

Understand

Understanding the strong coupling limit of massive type IIA string theory is a longstanding problem.

• We argue that perhaps this problem does not exist; namely, there may be no strongly coupled solutions of the massive theory.
• We show explicitly that massive type IIA string theory can never be strongly coupled in a weakly curved region of space-time.
• We illustrate our general claim with two classes of massive solutions in AdS4xCP3: one, previously known, with N = 1 supersymmetry, and a new one with N = 2 supersymmetry.