Spacetime Scale-Invariance and the Super p-Brane

TL;DR

This paper introduces a spacetime scale-invariant super p-brane action where the tension emerges dynamically, unifying descriptions of super p-branes and null super p-branes, with a special Born-Infeld form for p=1.

Contribution

It generalizes a Green-Schwarz type I superstring action to p-branes, revealing tension as an emergent constant and connecting different super p-brane regimes.

Findings

The action is spacetime scale-invariant.

Tension T emerges as an integration constant.

For p=1, the action takes a Born-Infeld form.

Abstract

We generalize to p-dimensional extended objects and type II superstrings a recently proposed Green-Schwarz type I superstring action in which the tension $T$ emerges as an integration constant of the equations of motion. The action is spacetime scale-invariant but its equations of motion are equivalent to those of the standard super p-brane for $T\ne 0$ and the null super p-brane for $T=0$. We also show that for $p=1$ the action can be written in ``Born-Infeld'' form.