Space-filling branes & gaugings

Abstract

We consider in any dimension the supersymmetric ℤ2 truncations of the maximal supergravity theories. In each dimension and for each truncation we determine all the sets of 1/2-BPS space-filling branes, i.e. branes whose world-volume invades the whole of space-time, that preserve the supersymmetry of the truncated theory and the representations of the symmetry of such theory to which they belong. We show that in any dimension below eight these sets always contain exotic branes, that are objects that do not have a ten-dimensional origin. We repeat the same analysis for half-maximal theories and for the quarter-maximal theories in four and three dimensions. We then discuss all the possible gaugings of these theories as described in terms of the embedding tensor. In general, the truncation acts on the quadratic constraints of the embedding tensor in such a way that some representations survive the truncation although they are not required by the supersymmetry of the truncated theory. We show that for any theory, among these representations, the highest-dimensional ones are precisely those of the 1/2-BPS space-filling branes that preserve the same supersymmetry of the truncated theory, and we interpret this result as the fact that these quadratic constraints after the truncation become tadpole conditions for such branes.