Dualities among Neveu-Schwarz sector branes in string theory

Abstract

We conjecture dualities among branes that consist of Neveu-Schwarz sector fields, such as NS5-branes. Two branes are dual after compactifications on spheres with gauge fluxes. The conjecture follows from simple considerations on string worldsheet theories. For some NS5-branes, we get level-rank dualities of Chern-Simons theories. Application of the dualities to a newly found brane in heterotic string theory reveals surprising properties of the worldvolume theory on it, for which we give evidence from anomaly inflow.

2 pages