Quantization of p-branes, D-p-branes and M-branes

TL;DR

This paper explores the quantization of various p-branes, including superstrings, supermembranes, and M-5-branes, emphasizing the role of Killing spinors and gauge choices in achieving covariant quantization.

Contribution

It demonstrates how Killing spinors facilitate covariant quantization of p-branes and introduces a general gauge condition for kappa-symmetric branes.

Findings

D-branes can be quantized Lorentz covariantly.

A gauge exists where the D-0-brane action is covariant and free.

The non-linear (2,0) tensor supermultiplet action corresponds to the M-5-brane in a Killing gauge.

Abstract

Killing spinors of space-time BPS configurations play an important role in quantization of theories with the fermionic worldvolume local symmetry. We show here how it works for the GS superstring, BST supermembrane and M-5-brane. We show that the non-linear generalization of the (2,0) d=6 tensor supermultiplet action is the M-5-brane action in a Killing gauge. For D-p-branes the novel feature of quantization is that they can be quantized Lorentz covariantly, in particular, for D-0-brane a gauge exists where the action is covariant and free. We present a general condition on possible choice of gauges for the kappa-symmetric branes.