Open Supermembranes Coupled to M-Theory Five-Branes

TL;DR

This paper investigates open supermembranes in eleven-dimensional M-Theory interacting with five-branes, analyzing their symmetry properties, anomaly cancellation, and the relation between brane tensions and gravitational constants.

Contribution

It demonstrates anomaly cancellation for open supermembranes on five-branes using a classical action term, confirming tension relations in M-Theory.

Findings

Anomalies cancel with a classical world-volume term.

Membrane and five-brane tensions relate to the eleven-dimensional gravitational constant.

World-volume action preserves supersymmetry and kappa invariance.

Abstract

We consider open supermembranes in eleven dimensions in the presence of closed M-Theory five-branes. It has been shown that, in a flat space-time, the world-volume action is kappa invariant and preserves a fraction of the eleven dimensional supersymmetries if the boundaries of the membranes lie on the five-branes. We calculate the reparametrisation anomalies due to the chiral fermions on the boundaries of the membrane and examine their cancellation mechanism. We show that these anomalies cancel with the aid of a classical term in the world-volume action, provided that the tensions of the five-brane and the membrane are related to the eleven dimensional gravitational constant in a way already noticed in M-Theory.