D-branes in non-critical superstrings and duality in N=1 gauge theories with flavor

Abstract

We study D-branes in the superstring background R^{3,1} \times SL(2,R)_{k=1}/U(1) which are extended in the cigar direction. Some of these branes are new. The branes realize flavor in the four dimensional N=1 gauge theories on the D-branes localized at the tip of the cigar. We study the analytic properties of the boundary conformal field theories on these branes with respect to their defining parameter and find non-trivial monodromies in this parameter. Through this approach, we gain a better understanding of the brane set-ups in ten dimensions involving wrapped NS5-branes. As one application, using the boundary conformal field theory description of the electric and magnetic D-branes, we can understand electric-magnetic (Seiberg) duality in N=1 SQCD microscopically in a string theoretic context.