Supersymmetric brane actions from interpolating dualisations

Abstract

We explore the possibility of constructing p-brane world-volume actions with the requirements of kappa-symmetry and gauge invariance as the only input. In the process, we develop a general framework which leads to actions interpolating between Poincare-dual descriptions of the world-volume theories. The method does not require any restrictions on the on-shell background configurations or on the dimensions of the branes. After some preliminary studies of low-dimensional cases we apply the method to the type IIB five-branes and, in particular, construct a kappa-symmetric action for the type IIB NS5-brane with a world-volume field content reflecting the fact that the D1-, D3- and D5-branes can end on it.