Schreiber Twisted Cohomotopy implies M-theory anomaly cancellation on 8-manifolds

Redirected from "Twisted Cohomotopy implies M-theory anomaly cancellation".


An article that we have written:



Abstract. We show that all the expected anomaly cancellations in M-theory follow from charge-quantizing the C-field in the non-abelian cohomology theory twisted Cohomotopy (“Hypothesis H”). Specifically, we show that such cocycles exhibit all of the following:

  1. the half-integral shifted flux quantization condition,
  2. the cancellation of the total M5-brane anomaly,
  3. the M2-brane tadpole cancellation,
  4. the cancellation of the W 7W_7 spacetime anomaly,
  5. the C-field integral equation of motion,
  6. the C-field background charge.

Along the way, we find that the calibrated N=1N =1 exceptional geometries (Spin(7){Spin}(7), G 2G_2, SU(3){SU}(3), SU(2){SU}(2)) are all induced from the classification of twists in Cohomotopy. Finally we show that the notable factor of 1/241/24 in the anomaly polynomial reflects the order of the 3rd stable homotopy group of spheres.


Based on:


Followups (Hypothesis H):


Talk notes:


Related talks:

Last revised on February 12, 2024 at 08:31:05. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.