U-duality p-Branes in Diverse Dimensions

Abstract

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-branes), each of them is characterized by a triplet of integers corresponding to the electric-like (magnetic-like) charges associated with the three 2-form gauge potentials present in the theory. For the $SL(3, Z)\times SL(2,Z)$ 0-branes (4-branes), each of them is labelled by a pair of triplets of integers corresponding to the electric-like (magnetic-like) charges associated with the two sets of three 1-form gauge potentials. The string (3-brane) tension and central charge are shown to be given by $SL(3, Z)$ invariant expressions. It is argued that when any two of the three integers in the integral triplet are relatively prime to each other, the corresponding string (3-brane) is stable and does not decay into multiple strings (3-branes) by a `tension gap' or `charge gap' equation. Similar results hold also for the 0-branes (4-branes). Alongwith the $SL(2, Z)$ dyonic membranes of Izquierdo et. al., these examples provide a further support for the conjectured $SL(3, Z) \times SL(2, Z)$ U-duality symmetry in this theory. Moreover, the study of these examples along with the previous ones provides us a recipe for constructing the U-duality p-branes of various supergravity theories in diverse dimensions. Constructions for these U-duality p-branes are also given.