Coupling M2-branes to background fields

Abstract

We discuss some of the issues arising in trying to extend the ABJM action to include couplings to background fields. This is analogous to the Myers-Chern-Simons terms of the multiple Dp-brane action. We review and extend previous results to include terms which are quadratic in the background fields. These are fixed by requiring that we recover the correct Myers-type terms upon using the novel Higgs mechanism to reduce to the multiple D2-brane action.