Torsion in M2-brane theory

Abstract

We determine the role of torsion in the local and global geometrical description of M2-branes with fluxes and parabolic monodromies. The monodromy corresponds to a representation of the fundamental group of the base manifold into the parabolic subgroup of $\mbox{SL}(2,\mathbb{Z})$, the group of isotopy classes of area-preserving diffeomorphisms. These are supersymmetric M2-branes with a quantum discrete spectrum with finite multiplicity. The global description of these QM2-branes is given by twisted torus bundles with monodromy. They are classified by $\mbox{H}^2(Σ,\mathbb{Z}_ρ)=\mathbb{Z}\oplus \mathbb{Z}_k$, or equivalently, by the coinvariants associated with the parabolic monodromy subgroup. We generalize previous constructions in two different ways. The first one considers parabolic monodromies with $k>1$. This will allow us to identify torsion cycles of order greater than one. We find that there are well-defined nilmanifolds in three, four, and five dimensions contained in the global description of these M2-branes. These nilmanifolds are in correspondence with the nilpotent Lie algebras $g_{3,1}$, $g_{3,1}\oplus g_1$, and $g_{3,1}\oplus g_2$. All these nilmanifolds have torsion cycles of order $k$ contained in the compact sector of the target space of the M2-brane. The torsion is also manifest in the equivalence classes of M2-brane twisted torus bundles, namely coinvariants. The second one is that we analyze how the torsion acts on the coinvariants of the base manifold. Together with the flux condition, the torsion defines explicitly the number of coinvariants for a given flux and monodromy $k$.