Intersecting M2- and M5-branes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the anomaly cancellation in intersecting M2- and M5-branes, showing how gravitational and fermionic anomalies interplay to ensure quantum consistency of these configurations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the Dirac-anomaly in intersecting M-branes can be canceled by a gravitational anomaly, with fermions ensuring overall anomaly cancellation.

Findings

Dirac-anomaly can be eliminated via gravitational anomaly

Fermions cancel the gravitational anomaly at the intersection

Provides a quantum consistency check for intersecting M-branes

Abstract

If an M2-brane intersects an M5-brane the canonical Wess-Zumino action is plagued by a Dirac-anomaly, i.e. a non-integer change of the action under a change of Dirac-brane. We show that this anomaly can be eliminated at the expense of a gravitational anomaly supported on the intersection manifold. Eventually we check that the last one is cancelled by the anomaly produced by the fermions present. This provides a quantum consistency check of these intersecting configurations.