BRANE WAVES AND STRINGS

Recently, solutions of the Born-Infeld theory representing strings ema nating from a Dirichlet p-brane have been constructed, We discuss the embedding of these Born-Infeld solutions into the non-abelian theory a ppropriate to multiple overlapping p-branes. We also prove supersymmet ry of the solutions explicitly in the full non-linear theory. We then study transverse fluctuations, both from the world-brane point of view and by analyzing a test string in the supergravity background of a Dp -brane. We find agreement between the two approaches for the cases p = 3,4. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.