Star Products from Open Strings in Curved Backgrounds

Abstract

We define a non-commutative product for arbitrary gauge and B-field backgrounds in terms of correlation functions of open strings. While off-shell correlations are, of course, not conformally invariant, it turns out that, at least to first derivative order, our product has the trace property and is associative up to surface terms if the background fields are put on-shell. No on-shell conditions for the inserted functions are needed, but it is essential to include the full contribution of the Born-Infeld measure. We work with a derivative expansion and avoid any topological limit, which would effectively constrain $H$.