Light-cone M5 and multiple M2-branes

TL;DR

This paper derives a light-cone gauge Lagrangian for the M5-brane with residual SDiff(5) gauge invariance and explores an infinite tension limit leading to a novel SO(8)-invariant theory related to multiple M2-branes.

Contribution

It introduces a new light-cone gauge formulation of the M5-brane with exotic gauge invariance and connects it to the BLG model for multiple M2-branes in a specific limit.

Findings

Derived light-cone gauge fixed Lagrangian for M5-brane with SDiff(5) gauge group.

Identified an infinite tension limit yielding an SO(8)-invariant (1+2)-dimensional theory.

Connected the resulting theory to the Carrollian limit of the Nambu bracket realization of the BLG model.

Abstract

We present the light-cone gauge fixed Lagrangian for the M5-brane; it has a residual `exotic' gauge invariance with the group of 5-volume preserving diffeomorphisms, SDiff(5), as gauge group. For an M5-brane of topology R2 x M3, for closed 3-manifold M3, we find an infinite tension limit that yields an SO(8)-invariant (1+2)-dimensional field theory with `exotic' SDiff(3) gauge invariance. We show that this field theory is the Carrollian limit of the Nambu bracket realization of the `BLG' model for multiple M2-branes.