p-Branes as Antisymmetric Nonabelian Tensorial Gauge Field Theories of Diffeomorphisms in p + 1 dimensions

Long ago, Bergshoeff, Sezgin, Tanni and Townsend have shown that the light-cone gauge-fixed action of a super p-brane belongs to a new kind of supersymmetric gauge theory of p-volume preserving diffeomorphisms (diffs) associated with the p-spatial dimensions of the extended object. These authors conjectured that this new kind of supersymmetric gauge theory must be related to an infinite-dim nonabelian antisymmetric gauge theory. It is shown in this work how this new theory should be part of an underlying antisymmetric nonabelian tensorial gauge field theory of p + 1-dimensional diffs (upon supersymmetrization) associated with the world volume evolution of the p-brane. We conclude by embedding the latter theory into a more fundamental one based on the Clifford-space geometry of the p-brane configuration space.