Gravitational domain walls and p-brane distributions

Abstract

We review the main algebraic aspects that characterize and determine the domain wall solutions of maximal gauged supergravity in various spacetime dimensions by considering consistent truncations that retain a number of components in the diagonal of the coset space scalar manifold of the theory. Starting from the algebraic classification of domain walls in D=4 gauged supergravity, we also derive the corresponding solutions in D=5 and D=7 dimensions. From a higher dimensional point of view, these solutions describe the gravitatonal field, in the field theory limit, of a large number of M2-, D3- and M5-branes that are distributed on hypersurfaces in the transverse space to the branes. As a new result we employ a smearing procedure as well as various dualities to list the irreducible curves and the symmetry groups of p-brane distributions for all values of p that are of interest in current applications of string theory. Some emphasis is placed on the presentation of new results in the case of NS5-branes.

13 pages, latex, no figures; contribution to the proceedings of the RTN network "The quantum structure of spacetime and the geometric nature of fundamental interactions", Berlin, 4-10 October 2000

Cited by in corpus (4)

• The Domain Walls of Gauged Maximal Supergravities and their M-theory Origin
• Integrable reductions of Spin(7) and G_2 invariant self-dual Yang-Mills equations and gravity
• NS5-branes on an ellipsis and novel marginal deformations with parafermions
• Five-Brane Configurations without a Strong Coupling Regime