This article reviews the generalization of field theory to space-time with noncommuting coordinates, starting with the basics and covering most of the active directions of research. Such theories are now known to emerge from limits of M theory and string theory and to describe quantum Hall states. In the last few years they have been studied intensively, and many qualitatively new phenomena have been discovered, on both the classical and the quantum level.

Noncommutative field theory

Superstring theoryをめぐって(放談室)

By Vyjayanthi Chari and Andrew Pressley: 651 pp., £22.95 (US$34.95), isbn 0 521 55884 0 (Cambridge University Press, 1994).

A guide to quantum groups

In this review we describe our current understanding of the properties of open string tachyons on an unstable D-brane or brane–antibrane system in string theory. The various string theoretic methods used for this study include techniques of two-dimensional conformal field theory, open string field theory, boundary string field theory, noncommutative solitons, etc. We also describe various attempts to understand these results using field theoretic methods. These field theory models include toy models like singular potential models and p-adic string theory, as well as more realistic version of the tachyon effective action based on Dirac–Born–Infeld type action. Finally we study closed string background produced by the "decaying" unstable D-branes, both in the critical string theory and in the two-dimensional string theory, and describe the open string completeness conjecture that emerges out of this study. According to this conjecture the quantum dynamics of an unstable D-brane system is described by an int...

Tachyon Dynamics in Open String Theory

We present a formalism to explicitly construct non-Abelian gauge theories on noncommutative spaces (induced via a star product with a constant Poisson tensor) from a consistency relation. This results in an expansion of the gauge parameter, the noncommutative gauge potential and fields in the fundamental representation, in powers of a parameter of the noncommutativity. This allows the explicit construction of actions for these gauge theories.

Construction of non-Abelian gauge theories on noncommutative spaces

We investigate the transformation from ordinary gauge field to noncommutative one which was introduced by N. Seiberg and E. Witten (hep-th/9908142). It is shown that the general transformation which is determined only by gauge equivalence has a path dependence in `θ-space'. This ambiguity is negligible when we compare the ordinary Dirac-Born-Infeld action with the noncommutative one in the U(1) case, because of the U(1) nature and slowly varying field approximation. However, in general, in the higher derivative approximation or in the U(N) case, the ambiguity cannot be neglected due to its noncommutative structure. This ambiguity corresponds to the degrees of freedom of field redefinition.

Comments on gauge equivalence in noncommutative geometry

We investigate the transformation from ordinary gauge field to noncommutative one which was introduced by N.Seiberg and E.Witten (hep-th/9908142). It is shown that the general transformation which is determined only by gauge equivalence has a path dependence in `\theta-space'. This ambiguity is negligible when we compare the ordinary Dirac-Born-Infeld action with the noncommutative one in the U(1) case, because of the U(1) nature and slowly varying field approximation. However, in general, in the higher derivative approximation or in the U(N) case, the ambiguity cannot be neglected due to its noncommutative structure. This ambiguity corresponds to the degrees of freedom of field redefinition.

Comments on Gauge Equivalence in Noncommutative Geometry

In this paper, we study a new matrix theory based on non-BPS D-instantons in type-IIA string theory and D-instanton--anti D-instanton system in type-IIB string theory, which we call K-matrix theory. The theory correctly incorporates the creation and annihilation processes of D-branes. The configurations of the theory are identified with spectral triples, which are the noncommutative generalization of riemannian geometry a la Connes, and they represent the geometry on the world-volume of higher dimensional D-branes. Remarkably, the configurations of D-branes in the K-matrix theory are naturally classified by a K-theoretical version of homology group, called K-homology. Furthermore, we argue that the K-homology correctly classifies the D-brane configurations from a geometrical point of view. We also construct the boundary states corresponding to the configurations of the K-matrix theory, and explicitly show that they represent the higher dimensional D-branes.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1126-6708/2002/03/034/pdf

D-branes, Matrix Theory and K-homology

We examine the fluctuations around a Dp-brane solution in an unstable D-brane system using boundary states and also boundary string field theory. We show that the fluctuations correctly reproduce the fields on the Dp-brane. Plugging these into the action of the unstable D-brane system, we recover not only the tension and RR charge, but also full effective action of the Dp-brane exactly. Our method works for general unstable D-brane systems and provides a simple proof of D-brane descent/ascent relations under the tachyon condensation. In the lowest dimensional unstable D-brane system, called K-matrix theory, D-branes are described in terms of operator algebra. We show the equivalence of the geometric and algebraic descriptions of a D-brane world-volume manifold using the equivalence between path integral and operator formulation of the boundary quantum mechanics. As a corollary, the Atiyah-Singer index theorem is naturally obtained by looking at the coupling to RR-fields. We also generalize the argument to type-I string theory.

Exact description of D-branes via tachyon condensation

The purpose of this paper is to formulate the Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) action in a framework of generalized geometry and clarify its symmetry. A D-brane is defined as a Dirac structure where scalar fields and gauge field are treated on an equal footing in a static gauge. We derive generalized Lie derivatives corresponding to the diffeomorphism and B- field gauge transformations and show that the DBI action is invariant under non-linearly realized symmetries for all types of diffeomorphisms and B-field gauge transformations. Consequently, we can interpret not only the scalar field but also the gauge field on the D-brane as the generalized Nambu-Goldstone boson.

Tsuguhiko Asakawa

Papers

Comments on gauge equivalence in noncommutative geometry

Comments on Gauge Equivalence in Noncommutative Geometry

D-branes, Matrix Theory and K-homology

Exact description of D-branes via tachyon condensation

D-branes in generalized geometry and Dirac-Born-Infeld action