Multiple Dp-branes in Weak Background Fields

Abstract

We find the terms in the nonabelian world-volume action of a system of many Dp-branes which describe the leading coupling to all type II supergravity background fields. These results are found by T-dualizing earlier results for D0-branes, which in turn were determined from calculations of the M(atrix) theory description of the supercurrent of 11D supergravity. Our results are compatible with earlier results on the supersymmetric Born-Infeld action for a single D-brane in a general background and with Tseytlin's symmetrized trace proposal for extending the abelian Born-Infeld action to a nonabelian theory. In the case p = 3, the operators we find on the D-brane world-volume are closely related to those which couple to supergravity fields in the AdS_5 * S^5 IIB supergravity background. This gives an explicit construction, including normalization, of some of the operators used in the celebrated AdS/CFT correspondence for 3-branes. We also discuss the S-duality of the action in the case p = 3, finding that the S-duality of the action determines how certain operators in the 4D N = 4 SYM theory transform under S-duality. These S-duality results give some new insight into the puzzle of the transverse 5-brane in M(atrix) theory.