Anomaly free effective action for the elementary M5-brane

TL;DR

This paper develops an anomaly-free effective action for an elementary M5-brane interacting with eleven-dimensional supergravity, incorporating chiral two-form dynamics and a well-defined three-form potential.

Contribution

It introduces a novel anomaly-free effective action for the M5-brane that includes the dynamics of the chiral two-form and a consistent three-form potential.

Findings

Constructed an anomaly-free action for the M5-brane

Included chiral two-form dynamics on the brane

Defined a consistent three-form potential on the worldvolume

Abstract

We construct an effective action describing an elementary M5-brane interacting with dynamical eleven-dimensional supergravity, which is free from gravitational anomalies. The current associated to the elementary brane is taken as a distribution valued delta-function on the support of the 5-brane itself. Crucial ingredients of the construction are the consistent inclusion of the dynamics of the chiral two-form on the 5-brane, and the use of an invariant Chern-kernel allowing to introduce a D=11 three-form potential which is well defined on the worldvolume of the 5-brane.