p-brane solitons in maximal supergravities

Abstract

In this paper we give a construction of p-brane solitons in all maximal supergravity theories in 4 ⩽ D ⩽ 11 dimensions that are obtainable from D = 11 supergravity by dimensional reduction. We first obtain the full bosonic Lagrangians for all these theories in a formalism adapted to the p-brane soliton construction. The solutions that we consider involve one dilaton field and one antisymmetric tensor field strength, which are in general linear combinations of the basic fields of the supergravity theories. We also study the supersymmetry properties of the solutions by calculating the eigenvalues of the Bogomol'nyi matrices, which are derived from the commutators of the supercharges. We give an exhaustive list of the supersymmetric p-brane solutions using field strengths of all degrees n = 4, 3, 2, 1, and the non-supersymmetric solutions for n = 4, 3, 2. As well as studying elementary and solitonic solutions, we also discuss dyonic solutions in D = 6 and D = 4. In particular, we find that the Bogomol'nyi matrices for the supersymmetric massless dyonic solutions have indefinite signature.