Supermembrane on the pp-wave background Original Research Article

We study the closed and open supermembranes on the maximally supersymmetric pp-wave background. In the framework of the membrane theory, the superalgebra is calculated by using the Dirac bracket and we obtain its central extension by surface terms. The result supports the existence of the extended objects in the membrane theory in the pp-wave limit. When the central terms are discarded, the associated algebra completely agrees with that of Berenstein–Maldacena–Nastase matrix model. We also discuss the open supermembranes on the pp-wave and elaborate the possible boundary conditions.