Anomalies of the SO(32) five-brane and their cancellation

TL;DR

This paper calculates the anomaly on the SO(32) five-brane's world-volume and demonstrates its cancellation via a Green-Schwarz-like mechanism, confirming the proposed field content of the five-brane.

Contribution

It provides the first explicit calculation of the anomaly and shows how it is canceled, supporting the proposed five-brane field content.

Findings

Anomaly due to chiral fermions is computed and shown to be cancelable.

A Green-Schwarz-like term is necessary for anomaly cancellation.

Results confirm the field content of the SO(32) five-brane proposed by Witten.

Abstract

The anomaly due to the chiral fermions on the world-volume of the SO(32) five-brane is calculated. It is shown that this contribution has the correct structure for it to be cancelled by the variation of the classical world-volume action. The cancellation mechanism requires a Green-Schwarz-like term in the classical action. The result confirms the field content of the SO(32) five-brane proposed by Witten.