Superbranes and Super Born-Infeld Theories as Nonlinear Realizations

Abstract

We outline, on a few instructive examples, the characteristic features of the approach to superbranes and super Born-Infeld theories based on the concept of partial spontaneous breaking of global supersymmetry (PBGS). The examples include the N=1, D=4 supermembrane and the ``space-filling'' D2- and D3-branes. Besides giving a short account of the available results for these systems, we present some new developments. For the supermembrane we prove the equivalence of the equation of motion following from the off-shell Goldstone superfield action and the one derived directly from the nonlinear realizations formalism. We give a new derivation of the off-shell Goldstone superfield actions for the considered systems, using a universal procedure inspired by the relationship between linear and nonlinear realizations of PBGS.