Exotic branes in Exceptional Field Theory: E <inf>7(7)</inf> and beyond

Abstract

© 2018, The Author(s). In recent years, it has been widely argued that the duality transformations of string and M-theory naturally imply the existence of so-called ‘exotic branes’ — low codimension objects with highly non-perturbative tensions, scaling as gsα for α ≤ −3. We argue that their intimate link with these duality transformations make them an ideal object of study using the general framework of Double Field Theory (DFT) and Exceptional Field Theory (EFT) — collectively referred to as ExFT. Parallel to the theme of dualities, we also stress that these theories unify known solutions in string- and M-theory into a single solution under ExFT. We argue that not only is there a natural unifying description of the lowest codimension objects, many of these exotic states require this formalism as a consistent supergravity description does not exist.