Eleven-dimensional supergravity on a manifold with boundary Original Research Article

In this paper, we present a systematic analysis of eleven-dimensional supergravity on a manifold with boundary, which is believed to be relevant to the strong coupling limit of the E8 × E8 heterotic string. Gauge and gravitational anomalies enter at a very early stage, and require a refinement of the standard Green-Schwarz mechanism for their cancellation. This uniquely determines the gauge group to be a copy of E8 for each boundary component, fixes the gauge coupling constant in terms of the gravitational constant, and leads to several striking new tests of the hypothesis that there is a consistent quantum M-theory with eleven-dimensional supergravity as its low-energy limit.