Introductory Lectures to D-branes (original) (raw)
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Introductory Lectures on D-Branes
2002
This is a pedagogical introduction to D-branes, addressed to graduate students in field theory and particle physics and to other beginners in string theory. I am not going to review the most recent results since there are already many good papers on web devoted to that. Instead, I will present some old techniques in some detail in order to show how some basic properties of strings and branes as the massless spectrum of string, the effective action of D-branes and their tension can be computed using QFT techniques. Also, I will present shortly the boundary state description of D-branes. The details are exposed for bosonic branes since I do not assume any previous knowledge of supersymmetry which is not a requirement for this school. However, for completeness and to provide basic notions for other lectures, I will discuss the some properties of supersymmetric branes. The present lectures were delivered at Jorge André Swieca School on Particle and Fields, 2001, Campos do Jordão, Brazil.
M-Theory and Quantum Geometry, 2000
In these lectures we present a detailed description of the origin and of the construction of the boundary state that is now widely used for studying the properties of D branes.
1999
In these lectures we present a detailed description of the origin and of the construction of the boundary state that is now widely used for studying the properties of D branes. (Lectures given at NATO-ASI on "Quantum Geometry" in Akureyri, Iceland, August 1999)
In these lectures we review the properties of a boosted and rotated boundary state and of a boundary state with an abelian gauge field deriving from it the Dirac-Born-Infeld action and a newly constructed class of classical solutions. We also review the construction of the boundary state for the stable non-BPS state of type I theory corresponding to the perturbative state present at the first excited level of the SO(32) heterotic string and transforming according to the spinor representation of SO(32) (Lectures presented at the YITP Workshop on ``Developments in Superstring and M-theory'', Kyoto, Japan, October 1999).
MATHEMATICAL ASPECTS OF D-BRANES ∗ hep-th/0402023
2004
In this lecture we review recent work on describing D-branes with nonzero Higgs vevs in terms of sheaves, which gives a physical on-shell D-brane interpretation to more sheaves than previously understood as describing D-branes. The mathematical ansatz for this encoding is checked by comparing open string spectra between D-branes with nonzero Higgs vevs to Ext groups between the corresponding sheaves. We illustrate the general methods with a few examples. 1.
Mathematical Aspects of D-Branes
Quantum Theory and Symmetries, 2004
In this lecture we review recent work on describing D-branes with nonzero Higgs vevs in terms of sheaves, which gives a physical on-shell D-brane interpretation to more sheaves than previously understood as describing D-branes. The mathematical ansatz for this encoding is checked by comparing open string spectra between D-branes with nonzero Higgs vevs to Ext groups between the corresponding sheaves. We illustrate the general methods with a few examples.
Lectures on strings, D-branes and gauge theories
Arxiv preprint hep-th/0003019, 2000
In these lectures we review the basic ideas of perturbative and nonperturbative string theory. On the non-perturbative side we give an introduction to D-branes and string duality. The elementary concepts of non-BPS branes and noncommutative gauge theories are also discussed.
Following is a collection of lecture notes on D-branes, which may be used by the reader as preparation for applications to modern research applications such as: the AdS/CFT and other gauge theory/geometry correspondences, Matrix Theory and stringy non-commutative geometry, etc. In attempting to be reasonably self-contained, the notes start from classical point-particles and develop the subject logically (but selectively) through classical strings, quantisation, D-branes, supergravity, superstrings, string duality, including many detailed applications. Selected focus topics feature D-branes as probes of both spacetime and gauge geometry, highlighting the role of world-volume curvature and gauge couplings, with some non-Abelian cases. Other advanced topics which are discussed are the (presently) novel tools of research such as fractional branes, the enhançon mechanism, D(ielectric)-branes and the emergence of the fuzzy/non-commutative sphere. (This is an expanded writeup of lectures given at ICTP, TASI, and BUSSTEPP.)
A note on supersymmetric D-brane dynamics
Physics Letters B, 1998
We study the spin dependence of D-brane dynamics in the Green-Schwarz formalism of boundary states. In particular we show how to interpret insertion of supercharges on the boundary state as sources of non-universal spin effects in D-brane potentials. In this way we find for a generic (D)p-brane, potentials going like v 4−n /r 7−p+n corresponding to interactions between the different components of the D-brane supermultiplet. From the eleven dimensional point of view these potentials arise from the exchange of field strengths corresponding to the graviton and the three form, coupled non-minimally to the branes. We show how an annulus computation truncated to its massless contribution is enough to reproduce these next-to-leading effects, meaning in particular that the one-loop (M)atrix theory effective action should encode all the spin dependence of low-energy supergravity interactions.
D-Branes in Type I String Theory
Fortschritte der Physik, 2001
We review the boundary state description of D-branes in type I string theory and show that the only stable non BPS configurations are the D-particle and the Dinstanton. We also compute the gauge and gravitational interactions of the non-BPS D-particles and compare them with the interactions of the dual non-BPS particles of the heterotic string, finding complete agreement.