Relating branes and matrices

Abstract

We construct a general map between a Dp-brane with magnetic flux and a matrix configuration of D0-branes, by showing how one can rewrite the boundary state of the Dp-brane in terms of its D0-brane constituents. This map gives a simple prescription for constructing the matrices of fuzzy spaces corresponding to branes of arbitrary shape and topology. Since we explicitly identify the D0-brane degrees of freedom on the brane, we also derive the D0-brane charge of the brane in a very direct way including the A-genus term. As a check on our formalism, we use our map to derive the abelian-Born-Infeld equations of motion from the action of the D0-brane matrices.