Anomaly Inflow for Gauge Defects

Abstract

Topological defects constructed out of scalar fields and possessing chiral fermion zero modes are known to exhibit an anomaly inflow mechanism which cancels the anomaly in the effective theory of the zero modes through an inflow of current from the space in which the defect is embedded. We investigate the analog of this mechanism for defects constructed out of gauge fields in higher dimensions. In particular we analyze this mechanism for string (one-brane) defects in six dimensions and for fivebranes in ten dimensions.}

Comments: 23 pp (harvmac l)