Superconformal D-branes and moduli spaces

Abstract

This thesis first gives a background and review of the article hep-th/0102038, where we substantiated a conjectured duality between two a priori unrelated gauge theories, N=2 quiver theory and N=2 Seiberg-Witten theory. These gauge theories have different realisations as the worldvolume theories on different D-brane configurations. We showed that there is an identity between the spaces of vacua (moduli spaces) arising in the two theories, which suggests that the corresponding string theory pictures are dual. Second, the thesis gives a background and description of the analysis performed in the three articles hep-th/0111161, hep-th/0202069 and hep-th/0304013, where we derived the most general, local, superconformal boundary conditions of the two-dimensional nonlinear sigma model. This model describes the dynamics of open strings, and the boundary conditions dictate the geometry of D-branes. In the last article we studied these boundary conditions for the special case of WZW models.

PhD thesis, LaTeX, 74 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (11)

• Monopole Condensation, And Confinement In N=2 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory
• Mirror Symmetry in Three Dimensional Gauge Theories
• New N=2 Superconformal Field Theories in Four Dimensions
• D-Branes on Calabi-Yau Spaces and Their Mirrors
• The Moduli Space of N=2 SUSY QCD and Duality in N=1 SUSY QCD
• D-branes in the WZW model
• Superconformal Fixed Points with E_n Global Symmetry
• Aspects of Type IIB Theory on ALE Spaces
• N=2 Boundary conditions for non-linear sigma models and Landau-Ginzburg models
• Exceptional SW Geometry from ALE Fibrations
• D-branes in N=2 WZW models