Supersymmetric fivebrane solitons (Q1817956)

Various supersymmetric fivebrane solitons are investigated by considering configurations with non-vanishing three-form. From a mathematical point of view this is a natural generalisation of calibrations. From a physical point of view, one expects to find supersymmetric solitons that include configurations corresponding to intersecting fivebranes and membranes and M-waves in spacetime. By dimensional reduction an instanton in the worldvolume Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) theory of a D4-brane is obtained. This corresponds to a D0-brane in a D4-brane which is the configuration that is derived by reducing along the \(5\) direction. In contrast to the self-dual string above, these strings do not carry any charge with respect to the field \(H\) and we therefore also refer to these instanton solutions as neutral strings. It is noted that the orthogonal configurations can be combined (usually breaking more supersymmetry) and this suggests that the corresponding worldvolume solitons can similarly be ``superposed''. Adding a membrane in the 5,6 directions and other configurations suggests that one can add a self-dual string to the corresponding calibrated surface. Similarly adding a wave in the 5 direction suggests that one can add instantons to the calibrated surfaces. It is seen that this is indeed the case and that moreover it is possible to combine all three. The second part of the paper focuses on obtaining soliton solutions using the manifestly covariant formalism. The general supersymmetry conditions for this formalism are derived, and time-dependent supersymmetric states corresponding to travelling waves along a fivebrane wrapped on a calibrated surface are considered. These states simply correspond to a ripple in the ``shape'' of the calibrated surface, travelling along a flat direction. The self-dual and neutral strings together on a flat fivebrane are considered.