Geometric and topological structures related to M-branes II: Twisted string and stringC structures

Abstract

The actions, anomalies and quantization conditions allow the M2-brane and the M5-brane to support, in a natural way, structures beyond spin on their world-volumes. The main examples are twisted string structures. This also extends to twisted stringc structures which we introduce and relate to twisted string structures. The relation of the C-field to Chern-Simons theory suggests the use of the string cobordism category to describe the M2-brane. © Copyright Australian Mathematical Publishing Association Inc. 2011.