Poisson-Lie T-duality: Open Strings and D-branes

Abstract

Global issues of the Poisson-Lie T-duality are addressed. It is shown that oriented open strings propagating on a group manifold $G$ are dual to $D$-brane - anti-$D$-brane pairs propagating on the dual group manifold $\ti G$. The $D$-branes coincide with the symplectic leaves of the standard Poisson structure induced on the dual group $\ti G$ by the dressing action of the group $G$. T-duality maps the momentum of the open string into the mutual distance of the $D$-branes in the pair. The whole picture is then extended to the full modular space $M(D)$ of the Poisson-Lie equivalent $\si$-models which is the space of all Manin triples of a given Drinfeld double.T-duality rotates the zero modes of pairs of $D$-branes living on targets belonging to $M(D)$. In this more general case the $D$-branes are preimages of symplectic leaves in certain Poisson homogeneous spaces of their targets and, as such, they are either all even or all odd dimensional.