(2,0) Supersymmetry and the Light-Cone Description of M5-branes

TL;DR

This paper derives a light-cone description of the six-dimensional (2,0) superalgebra, showing how it reduces to instanton moduli space dynamics, and extends the quantization to include Coulomb branch potentials and background couplings.

Contribution

It introduces a novel reduction of the (2,0) superalgebra to one-dimensional instanton moduli space dynamics and generalizes the light-cone formulation to include additional physical effects.

Findings

Reduction to instanton moduli space dynamics

Quantization reproduces light-cone (2,0) theory

Inclusion of Coulomb branch potential and background couplings

Abstract

In 1007.2982 a novel system of equations which propagate in one null and four space directions were obtained as the on-shell conditions for the six-dimensional (2,0) superalgebra. In this paper we show how this system reduces to one-dimensional motion on instanton moduli space. Quantization leads to the previous light-cone proposal of the (2,0) theory, generalized to include a potential that arises on the Coulomb branch as well as couplings to background gauge and self-dual two-form fields.