1998/03/13 by K. S. Stelle, K.S. Stelle, Stelle, K. S. · 16 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Nonlinear Waves and Solitons #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-th/9803116
99 pages, 7 figures, LaTeX, uses epsf.sty. Based on lectures given at the ICTP Summer School in 1996 and 1997. Misprints corrected and journal references added
openalex publication_date 1998/03/13 · arxiv created 2009/09/23 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This review considers the properties of classical solutions to supergravity theories with partially unbroken supersymmetry. These solutions saturate Bogomol'ny-Prasad-Sommerfield bounds on their energy densities and are the carriers of the p-form charges that appear in the supersymmetry algebra. The simplest such solutions have the character of (p+1)-dimensional Poincaré-invariant hyperplanes in spacetime, i.e. p-branes. Topics covered include the relations between mass densities, charge densities and the preservation of unbroken supersymmetry; interpolating-soliton structure; diagonal and vertical Kaluza-Klein reduction families; multiple-charge solutions and the four D=11 elements; duality-symmetry multiplets; charge quantisation; low-velocity scattering and the geometry of worldvolume supersymmetric σ-models; and the target-space geometry of BPS instanton solutions obtained by the dimensional reduction of static p-branes.