BPS BOUNDS FOR WORLDVOLUME BRANES

The worldvolume field equations of M-branes and D-branes are known to admit p-brane soliton solutions. These solitons are shown to saturate a BPS-type bound on their p-volume tensions, which are expressed in te rms of central charges that are expected to appear in the worldvolume supertranslation algebra. The cases we consider include vortices, `BIo ns', instantons and dyons (both abelian and non-abelian), and the stri ng boundaries of M-2-branes in the M-5-brane.