Abstract

We study a family of BPS solutions of type-IIA supergravity that can be interpreted as describing the 'transmutation' of a Neveu-Schwarz five-brane into a D4-brane in the presence of a D6-brane. The D4-brane, which termmates on the D6-brane, can be equally well interpreted as a 'pure multipole' configuration of NS5-brane wrapped tightly around the D6-brane. Such a transmutation is a "near-core" version (i.e. near the D6-brane) of the brane-creation that can occur when two branes pass through each other, as in the Hanany-Witten construction. The work below highlights certain charge non-conservation features of type-IIA supergravity.