Stheory

The representation theory of the maximally extended superalgebra with 32 fermionic and 528 bosonic generators is developed in order to investigate nonperturbative properties of the democratic secret theory behind strings and other $p$-branes. The presence of Lorentz nonsinglet central extensions is emphasized, their role for understanding up to 13 hidden dimensions and their physical interpretation as boundaries of $p$-branes are elucidated. The criteria for a new larger set of BPS-like nonperturbative states is given and the methods of investigation are illustrated with several explicit examples.