Dyonic anomalies

Journal article, 2005

We consider the problem of coupling a dyonic p-brane in d = 2p + 4 space-time dimensions to a prescribed (p + 2)-form field strength. This is particularly subtle when p is odd. For the case p = 1, we explicitly construct a coupling functional, which is a sum of two terms: one which is linear in the prescribed field strength, and one which describes the coupling of the brane to its self-field and takes the form of a Wess-Zummo term depending only on the embedding of the brane world-volume into space-time. We then show that this functional is well-defined only modulo a certain anomaly, related to the Euler class of the normal bundle of the brane world-volume.