2003/06/05 by Daniel Z. Freedman, Kostas Skenderis, Marika Taylor · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.68.106001
published as Phys.Rev.D68:106001,2003 · 28 pages
arxiv created 2003/06/05 · openalex publication_date 2003/11/03 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the worldvolume supersymmetries of M2 branes in the maximally supersymmetric plane wave background of M theory. For certain embeddings the standard probe analysis indicates that the worldvolume theory has less than 16 supersymmetries. We show that at the quadratic level the worldvolume theory admits additional linearly realized supersymmetries, and that the spectra of the branes are organized into multiplets of these symmetries. We find, however, that these supersymmetries are not respected by worldvolume interactions. Our analysis was motivated by recent work showing that D branes in the maximally supersymmetric plane wave background of type IIB string theory admit supersymmetries beyond those of the probe analysis. The construction of the additional supercharges in this case was specific to a string worldsheet that is a strip and the present results suggest that string interactions do not preserve these symmetries.