A Toy Model of the M5-brane: Anomalies of Monopole Strings in Five Dimensions

TL;DR

This paper models a five-dimensional monopole string solution with chiral fermion zero modes, drawing parallels to M-theory fivebranes, and explores anomaly cancellation mechanisms involving Chern-Simons terms.

Contribution

It introduces a simplified toy model of the M5-brane, analyzing anomaly cancellation in monopole string solutions with implications for M-theory.

Findings

Normal bundle anomalies are canceled similarly to M-theory fivebranes.

Chern-Simons terms are crucial for anomaly cancellation.

Insights connect microscopic world-volume analysis with low-energy effective theory.

Abstract

We study a five-dimensional field theory which contains a monopole (string) solution with chiral fermion zero modes. This monostring solution is a close analog of the fivebrane solution of M-theory. The cancellation of normal bundle anomalies parallels that for the M-theory fivebrane, in particular, the presence of a Chern-Simons term in the low-energy effective U(1) gauge theory plays a central role. We comment on the relationship between the the microscopic analysis of the world-volume theory and the low-energy analysis and draw some cautionary lessons for M-theory.