Global gravitational anomaly cancellation for five-branes

We show that the global mixed gauge-gravitational anomaly of the worldvolume theory of the M5-brane vanishes, when the anomaly inflow from the bulk is taken into account. This result extends to the type IIA and heterotic $E_8 \times E_8$ five-branes. As a by-product, we provide a definition of the chiral fermionic fields for generic nonspin M5-brane worldvolume and determine the coupling between the self-dual field and the M-theory C-field.

Full Text (PDF format)

Published 19 October 2015