D-brane Physics and Noncommutative Yang-Mills Theory

Abstract

We discuss the physics of a single Dp-brane in the presence of a background electromagnetic field B_{ij}. It has recently been shown \cite{SW} that, in a specific \alpha ' \to 0 limit, the physics of the brane is correctly described by noncommutative Yang-Mills theory, where the noncommutative gauge potential is given explicitly in terms of the ordinary U(1) field. In a previous paper \cite{SC} the physics of a D2-brane was analyzed in the Sen-Seiberg limit of M(atrix) theory by considering a specific coordinate change on the brane world-volume. We show in this note that the limit considered in \cite{SC} is the same as the one described in \cite{SW}, in the specific case p=2, rk B_{ij} = 2. Moreover we show that the coordinate change in \cite{SC} can be reinterpreted, in the spirit of \cite{SW}, as a field redefinition of the ordinary Yang-Mills field, and we prove that the transformations agree for large backgrounds. The results are finally used to considerably streamline the proof of the equivalence of the standard Born-Infeld action with noncommutative Yang-Mills theory, in the large wave-length regime.