Marcus T. Grisaru

We discuss features of the 4D, N = 1 WZNW term expressed as a function of chiral superfields and defined in a manner appropriate to calculate phenomenological matrix elements.

We extend the general method of hep-th/0009192 to compute the consistent gauge anomaly for noncommutative 4d SSYM coupled to chiral matter. The choice of the minimal homotopy path allows us to obtain a simple and compact result. We perform the reduction to components in the WZ gauge proving that our result contains, as lowest component, the bosonic chiral anomaly for noncommutative YM theories recently obtained in literature.

We use the method of Banerjee, Banerjee and Mitra and minimal homotopy paths to compute the consistent gauge anomaly for several superspace models of SSYM coupled to matter. We review the derivation of the anomaly for N=1 in four dimensions and then discuss the anomaly for two-dimensional models with (2,0) supersymmetry.

We investigate the `giant gravitons' of McGreevy, Susskind and Toumbas [hep-th/0003075]. We demonstrate that these are BPS configurations which preserve precisely the same supersymmetries as a `point-like' graviton. We also show that there exist `dual' giant gravitons consisting of spherical branes expanding into the AdS component of the spacetime. Finally, we discuss the realization of the stringy exclusion principle within this expanded framework.