Compactification of Supermembranes

Abstract

We look at the vertical dimensional reduction of the supermembrane of M-theory to the D2-brane of Type IIA string theory. Our approach considers the soliton solutions of the two low energy field limits, D=11 and D=10 Type IIA supergravities, rather than the worldvolume actions. It is thus necessary to create a periodic array. The standard Kaluza-Klein procedure requires that the brane is smeared over a transverse direction, but we will keep the dependence on the compactification coordinate, seeing how the eleventh dimension comes into play when we close up on the D2-brane.