Search for Duality Symmetries in p-Brane Theories

String duality suggests a fascinating juxtoposition of world-volume and target-space dynamics. This is particularly apparent in the $D$-brane description of stringy solitons that forms a major focus of this article (which is {\it not} intended to be a comprehensive review of this extensive subject). The article is divided into four sections: 1. The oligarchy of string world-sheets 2. $p$-branes and world-volumes 3. World-sheets for world-volumes 4. Boundary states, $D...

$p'$-brane solutions to rank $p+1$ composite antisymmetric tensor field theories of the kind developed by Guendelman, Nissimov and Pacheva are found when the dimensionality of spacetime is $D=(p+1)+(p'+1)$. These field theories posses an infinite dimensional group of global Noether symmetries, that of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms of the target space of the scalar primitive field constituents. Crucial in the construction of $p'$ brane solutions are the duality transformat...

Nonlinear equations of $p$-branes in $D=(2p+1)$-dimensional Minkowski space are discussed. Presented are new exact solutions for a set of spinning $p$-branes with $p=2,3,...,(D-1)/2$ and the Abelian symmetries $U(1)\times U(1)\times... \times U(1)$ of their shapes.

Recently, Maldacena, Moore and Seiberg introduced non-maximally symmetric boundary states on group manifold using T-duality. In the work presented here we suggest simple description of these branes in terms of group elements. We show that T-dualization actually reduces to multiplication of conjugacy classes by the corresponding U(1) subgroups. Using this description we find the two-form trivializing the WZW three-form on the branes. SU(2) and $SL(2,R)$ examples are considered...

We show how a solitonic ``magnetically'' charged $p$-brane solution of a given supergravity theory, with the magnetic charge carried by an antisymmetric tensor gauge field, can be generalized to a dyonic solution. We discuss the cases of ten-dimensional and eleven-dimensional supergravity in more detail and a new dyonic five-brane solution in ten dimensions is given. Unlike the purely electrically or magnetically charged five-brane solution the dyonic five-brane contains non-...

U-duality p-branes in toroidally compactified type II superstring theories in space-time dimensions $10 > D \ge 4$ can be constructed explicitly based on the conjectured U-duality symmetries and the corresponding known single-charge super p-brane configurations. As concrete examples, we first construct explicitly the $SL(3, Z)$ superstrings and $SL(3, Z) \times SL(2, Z)$ 0-branes as well as their corresponding magnetic duals in $D = 8$. For the $SL(3, Z)$ superstrings (3-bran...

It is shown that a relativistic (i.e. a Poincar{\' e} invariant) theory of extended objects (called p-branes) is not necessarily invariant under reparametrizations of corresponding $p$-dimensional worldsheets (including worldlines for $p = 0$). Consequnetly, no constraints among the dynamical variables are necessary and quantization is straightforward. Additional degrees of freedom so obtained are given a physical interpretation as being related to membrane's elastic deformat...

We review the properties of classical p-brane solutions to supergravity theories, i.e. solutions that may be interpreted as Poincare-invariant hyperplanes in spacetime. Topics covered include the distinction between elementary/electric and solitonic/magnetic solutions, examples of singularity and global structure, relations between mass densities, charge densities and the preservation of unbroken supersymmetry, diagonal and vertical Kaluza-Klein reduction families, Scherk-Sch...

We consider the actions for ten--dimensional $p$--branes and $D$--branes in an arbitrary curved background and discuss some of their properties. We comment on how the $SL(2,R)$ duality symmetry acts on the five--brane actions.

Using a global superalgebra with 32 fermionic and 528 bosonic charges, many features of p-brane dualities and hidden dimensions are discussed.