WORLD-VOLUME ACTION OF THE M-THEORY 5-BRANE

This paper presents a 6d world-volume action that describes the dynami cs of the M-theory five-brane in a hat lid space-time background. The world-volume action has global lid super-Poincare invariance, as well as 6d general coordinate invariance and kappa symmetry, which are real ized as local symmetries. The paper mostly considers a formulation in which general coordinate invariance is not manifest in one direction. However, it also describes briefly an alternative formulation, due to Pasti, Sorokin, and Tonin, in which general coordinate invariance is m anifest. The latter approach requires auxiliary fields and new gauge i nvariances. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.