Generalized Dirichlet Branes and Zero-modes

Abstract

We investigate the effective dynamics of an arbitrary Dirichlet p-brane, in a path-integral formalism, by incorporating the massless excitations of closed string modes in open bosonic string theory. It is shown that the closed string background fields in the bosonic sector of type II theories induce invariant extrinsic curvature on the world-volume. In addition, the curvature can be seen to be associated with a divergence at the boundary of string world-sheet. The re-normalization of the collective coordinates, next to leading order in its derivative expansion, is performed to handle the divergence and the effective dynamics is encoded in Dirac-Born-Infeld action. Furthermore, the collective dynamics is generalized to include appropriate fermionic partners in type I super-string theory. The role of string modes is reviewed in terms of the collective coordinates and the gauge theory on the world-volume is argued to be non-local in presence of the U(1) invariant field strength.