Intersecting D-branes, Chern-kernels and the inflow mechanism

TL;DR

This paper develops a local anomaly cancellation mechanism for intersecting D-branes in supergravity using Chern-kernels, enabling consistent anomaly cancellation even for non-transversal intersections and dual brane pairs.

Contribution

It introduces the use of Chern-kernels to achieve local anomaly cancellation and constructs a singularity-free effective action for RR-fields in intersecting D-brane systems.

Findings

Achieved local anomaly cancellation for intersecting D-branes.

Constructed a singularity-free effective action for RR-fields.

Enabled anomaly cancellation for dual pairs of D-branes.

Abstract

We analyse a system of arbitrarily intersecting D-branes in ten-dimensional supergravity. Chiral anomalies are supported on the intersection branes, called I-branes. For non-transversal intersections anomaly cancellation has been realized until now only cohomologically but not locally, due to short-distance singularities. In this paper we present a consistent local cancellation mechanism, writing the delta-like brane currents as differentials of the recently introduced Chern--kernels, J=dK. In particular, for the first time we achieve anomaly cancellation for dual pairs of D-branes. The Chern-kernel approach allows to construct an effective action for the RR-fields which is free from singularities and cancels the quantum anomalies on all D-branes and I-branes.