Schreiber M-Theory from the Superpoint

An article that we have written:

Abstract: The “brane scan” classifies consistent Green-Schwarz superstrings and super-membranes in terms of the invariant cocycles on super-Minkowski spacetimes. The “brane bouquet” generalizes this by consecutively forming the invariant higher central extensions induced by these cocycles, which yields the complete brane content of string theory/M-theory, including the D-branes and the M5-brane, as well as the various duality relations between these. This raises the question whether the super-Minkowski spacetimes themselves arise as maximal invariant central extensions. Here we prove that they do. Starting from the simplest possible super-Minkowski spacetime, the superpoint, which has no Lorentz structure and no spinorial structure, we give a systematic process of consecutive maximal invariant central extensions, and show that it discovers the super-Minkowski spacetimes that contain superstrings, culminating in the 10- and 11-dimensional super-Minkowski spacetimes of string/M-theory and leading directly to the brane bouquet.

Lecture notes:

All summed up in:

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