Multiple D2-Brane Action from M2-Branes

TL;DR

This paper derives the multiple D2-brane effective action from M2-branes using the BLG and ABJM theories, showing that high-order terms are commutators and exploring the derivation's limitations for different gauge groups.

Contribution

It explicitly derives the multiple D2-brane action from M2-branes and analyzes the role of high-order terms, highlighting limitations for certain gauge symmetries.

Findings

High-order F^3 and F^4 terms are commutators, not contributing to the effective action.

Correct F^4 terms are obtained for SU(2) gauge symmetry but not for larger N.

The derivation provides insights into the structure of M2 to D2-brane transition.

Abstract

We study the detail derivation of the multiple D2-brane effective action from multiple M2-branes in the Bagger-Lambert-Gustavsson (BLG) theory and the Aharony-Bergman-Jafferis-Maldacena (ABJM) theory by employing the novel Higgs mechanism. We show explicitly that the high-order F^3 and F^4 terms are commutator terms, and conjecture that all the high-order terms are commutator terms. Because the commutator terms can be treated as the covariant derivative terms, these high-order terms do not contribute to the multiple D2-brane effective action. Inspired by the derivation of a single D2-brane from a M2-brane, we consider the curved M2-branes and introduce an auxiliary field. Integrating out the auxiliary field, we indeed obtain the correct high-order F^4 terms in the D2-brane effective action from the BLG theory and the ABJM theory with SU(2)\times SU(2) gauge symmetry, but we can not obtain the correct high-order F^4 terms from the ABJM theory with U(N)\times U(N) and SU(N)\times SU(N) gauge symmetries for N > 2. We also briefly comment on the (gauged) BF membrane theory.