Weyl-Invariant Light-Like Branes and Black Hole Physics

Abstract

We propose a new class of p-brane theories which are Weyl-conformally invariant for any p. For any odd world-volume dimension the latter describe intrinsically light-like branes, hence the name WILL-branes (Weyl-Invariant Light-Like branes). Next we discuss the dynamics of WILL-membranes (i.e., for p=2) both as test branes in various external physically relevant D=4 gravitational backgrounds, as well as within the framework of a coupled D=4 Einstein-Maxwell-WILL-membrane system. In all cases we find that the WILL-membrane materializes the event horizon of the corresponding black hole solutions, thus providing an explicit dynamical realization of the membrane paradigm in black hole physics.