Exact Nambu-Goto 4-Surfaces and Octonionic Cayley Selection in 8D

Abstract

We study four-dimensional Euclidean Nambu-Goto embeddings in eight dimensions in the presence of the Spin(7)-invariant four-form constructed from octonionic structure constants. A broad class of holomorphic maps is shown by direct substitution to satisfy the nonlinear Nambu-Goto Euler-Lagrange equations. For a compatible Spin(7) structure these same embeddings satisfy the Cayley calibration condition. The calculation therefore gives a discrete octonionic selection rule for the relative orientation of an exact Nambu-Goto 4-surface and the Spin(7) structure of the target.

7 pages