Tensionless limit of M5-brane and conformal symmetry of its bosonic body
Abstract
We obtain a tensionless limit of the M-theory 5-brane action and discuss its properties. The consistency of this limit requires that the field strength H3 of the 2-form gauge field on the M5 brane worldvolume is non-vanishing and non-degenerate, so that one can also regard it as a strong H3-field limit. The induced 6d worldvolume metric of this theory is non-degenerate in contrast to conventional tensionless (null) p-branes. We find that the tensionless M5-brane action is invariant under a super-Weyl symmetry acting on the bulk supergeometry, while in the purely bosonic case the action is invariant under an 11D target-space conformal symmetry, a property which is characteristic for the tensionless bosonic branes. Upon imposing a static gauge, which fixes worldvolume diffeomorphisms, this 11D conformal symmetry becomes a deformed 6d worldvolume conformal symmetry whose action on the worldvolume coordinates involves field dependent terms. When the transversal fluctuations of the 5-brane in the bulk are zero, the model reduces to the conformal non-linear chiral 2-form electrodynamics considered earlier by Gibbons and West, and by Townsend.
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BibTeX
@misc{bandos2026tensionless,
title = {{Tensionless limit of M5-brane and conformal symmetry of its bosonic body}},
author = {Igor Bandos and Kurt Lechner and Dmitri P. Sorokin},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2607.29653},
eprint = {2607.29653},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.29653},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Tensionless limit of M5-brane and conformal symmetry of its bosonic body
AU - Igor Bandos
AU - Kurt Lechner
AU - Dmitri P. Sorokin
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/24
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2607.29653
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.29653
AB - We obtain a tensionless limit of the M-theory 5-brane action and discuss its properties. The consistency of this limit requires that the field strength H_3 of the 2-form gauge field on the M5 brane worldvolume is non-vanishing and non-degenerate, so that one can also regard it as a strong H_3-field limit. The induced 6d worldvolume metric of this theory is non-degenerate in contrast to conventional tensionless (null) p-branes. We find that the tensionless M5-brane action is invariant under a super-Weyl symmetry acting on the bulk supergeometry, while in the purely bosonic case the action is invariant under an 11D target-space conformal symmetry, a property which is characteristic for the tensionless bosonic branes. Upon imposing a static gauge, which fixes worldvolume diffeomorphisms, this 11D conformal symmetry becomes a deformed 6d worldvolume conformal symmetry whose action on the worldvolume coordinates involves field dependent terms. When the transversal fluctuations of the 5-brane in the bulk are zero, the model reduces to the conformal non-linear chiral 2-form electrodynamics considered earlier by Gibbons and West, and by Townsend.
ER -