Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Trieste,
Strada Costiera 11, 34014-Trieste, Italy
Abstract:
We borrow the minisuperspace approximation from Quantum Cosmology and
the
quenching approximation from in order to derive a new form of
the bosonic -brane
propagator. In this new approximation we obtain an exact
description of both the collective mode deformation of the brane
and the center of mass dynamics in the target spacetime. The collective
mode dynamics is a generalization of string dynamics in terms of area
variables. The final result is that the evolution of a -brane in the
quenched-minisuperspace approximation
is formally equivalent to the effective motion of a
particle in a spacetime where points as well as
hypersurfaces are considered on the same footing as fundamental
geometrical objects. This geometric equivalence leads us to define a new
tension-shell condition that is a direct extension of the
Klein-Gordon condition for material particles to the case of a physical
-brane.