BPS States and Minimal Surfaces
Abstract
It was observed recently, that the low energy effective action of the four-dimensional supersymmetric theories may be obtained as a certain limit of M Theory. From this point of view, the BPS states correspond to the minimal area membranes ending on the M Theory fivebrane. We prove that for the configuration, corresponding to the SU(2) Super Yang-Mills theory, the BPS spectrum is correctly reproduced, and develop techniques for analyzing the BPS spectrum in more general cases. We show that the type of the supermultiplet is related to the topology of the membrane: disks correspond to hypermultiplets, and cylinders to vector multiplets. We explain the relation between minimal surfaces and geodesic lines, which shows that our description of BPS states is closely related to one arising in Type II string compactification on Calabi-Yau threefolds.
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-th/9708068,
title = {BPS States and Minimal Surfaces},
author = {Andrei Mikhailov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9708068},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
31 pp., LaTeX, 6 PostScript figures. The construction of bosonic and fermionic zero modes is explained in more invariant terms and generalized to membranes of arbitrary topology. Mistake in the discussion of membrane worldsheet theory is corrected. The relation between membranes and geodesic lines is explained