Effective potential in non-supersymmetric SU(N) x SU(N) gauge theory and interactions of type 0 D3-branes

We study some aspects of short-distance interaction between parallel D3-branes in type 0 string theory as described by the corresponding world-volume gauge theory. We compute the one-loop effective potential in the non-supersymmetric SU(N) x SU(N) gauge theory (which is a Z_2 projection of the U(2N) n=4 SYM theory) representing dyonic branes composed of N electric and N magnetic D3-branes. The branes of the same type repel at short distances, but an electric and a magnetic brane attract, and the forces between self-dual branes cancel. The self-dual configuration (with the positions of the electric and the magnetic branes, i.e. the diagonal entries of the adjoint scalar fields, being the same) is stable against separation of one electric or one magnetic brane, but is unstable against certain modes of separation of several same-type branes. This instability should be suppressed in the large N limit, i.e. should be irrelevant for the large N CFT interpretation of the gauge theory suggested in hep-th/9901101.