The thesis begins with an introduction to M-theory (at a graduate student's level), starting from perturbative string theory and proceeding to dualities, D-branes and finally Matrix theory. The following chapter treats, in a self-contained way, of general classical p-brane solutions. Black and extremal branes are reviewed, along with their semi-classical thermodynamics. We then focus on intersecting extremal branes, the intersection rules being derived both with and without the explicit use of supersymmetry. The last three chapters comprise more advanced aspects of brane physics, such as the dynamics of open branes, the little theories on the world-volume of branes and how the four dimensional Schwarzschild black hole can be mapped to an extremal configuration of branes, thus allowing for a statistical interpretation of its entropy. The original results were already reported in hep-th 9701042, hep-th 9704190, hep-th 9710027 and hep-th 9801053.
Abstract Various aspects of branes in the recently proposed matrix model for M-theory are discussed. A careful analysis of the supersymmetry algebra of the matrix model uncovers some central changes which can be activated only in the large N limit. We identify the states with non-zero charges as branes of different dimensions. Abstract We formulate boundary conditions for an open membrane that ends on the fivebrane of M -theory. We show that the dynamics of the eleven-dimensional fivebrane can be obtained from the quantization of a “small membrane” that is confined to a single fivebrane and which moves with the speed of light. This shows that the eleven-dimensional fivebrane has an interpretation as a D -brane of an open supermembrane as has recently been proposed by Strominger and Townsend. We briefly discuss the boundary dynamics of an infinitely extended planar membrane that is stretched between two parallel fivebranes. 