Branes as solutions of gauge theories in gravitational field

The idea of the Gauss map is unified with the concept of branes as hypersurfaces embedded into D -dimensional Minkowski space. The map introduces new generalized coordinates of branes alternative to their world vectors x and identified with the gauge and other massless fields. In these coordinates the Dirac p -branes realize extremals of the Euler–Lagrange equations of motion of a (p+1) -dimensional SO(D-p-1) gauge-invariant action in a gravitational background