The M5-brane Hamiltonian Original Research Article

We obtain the Hamiltonian form of the world-volume action for the M5-brane is a general D = 11 supergravity background. We use this result to obtain a new version of the covariant M5-brane Lagrangian in which the tension appears as a dynamical variable, although this Lagrangian has some unsatisfactory features which we trace to peculiarities of the null limit. We also show that the M5-brane action is invariant under all (super)isometries of the background.