Massive Branes

TL;DR

This paper explores the worldvolume theories of massive branes in 10D supergravity, revealing new fields and couplings that explain brane creation phenomena during brane interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic way to incorporate new worldvolume fields in massive branes and links them to M-theoretic origins, advancing understanding of brane dynamics.

Findings

New worldvolume fields for massive branes are identified.

Couplings involving additional worldvolume forms are derived.

Implications for brane creation during interactions are explained.

Abstract

We investigate the effective worldvolume theories of branes in a background given by (the bosonic sector of) 10-dimensional massive IIA supergravity (``massive branes'') and their M-theoretic origin. In the case of the solitonic 5-brane of type IIA superstring theory the construction of the Wess-Zumino term in the worldvolume action requires a dualization of the massive Neveu-Schwarz/Neveu-Schwarz target space 2-form field. We find that, in general, the effective worldvolume theory of massive branes contains new worldvolume fields that are absent in the massless case, i.e. when the mass parameter m of massive IIA supergravity is set to zero. We show how these new worldvolume fields can be introduced in a systematic way. In particular, we find new couplings between the massive solitonic 5-brane and the target space background, involving an additional worldvolume 1-form and 6-form. These new couplings have implications for the anomalous creation of branes. In particular, when a massive solitonic 5-brane passes through a D8-brane a stretched D6-brane is created. Similarly, in M-theory we find that when an M5-brane passes through an M9-brane a stretched Kaluza-Klein monopole is created. Pairs of massive branes of type IIA string theory can be viewed as the direct and double dimensional reduction of a single ``massive M-brane'' whose worldvolume theory is described by a gauged sigma model.