Fatal attraction: more on decaying anti-branes

A bstract We elaborate on the decay of branes inside throat geometries that are supported by flux carrying charges opposite to the brane. Our main point is that such back-grounds necessarily have a local, possibly diverging, pile up of brane-charges dissolved in flux around the anti-brane due to the (fatal) attraction of the flux towards the brane. We explain that this causes enhanced brane-flux annihilation and is in tension with the idea that anti-branes can be used to construct meta-stable vacua. We argue that stable configurations — if they at all exist — are not obtainable within SUGR. The problem we point out is already present when the back-reaction is confined in the IR and the associated uplift energy small. Our results are valid in the regime that is complementary to a recent analysis of Bena et al.