Superconnections, anomalies and non-BPS brane charges (Q697835): Difference between revisions

There is a canonical map from the \(K\)-theory group into cohomology given by the Chern character, which can be used to give explicit charge formulas for the coupling of Ramond-Ramond potentials to the D-brane worldvolumes. For this, the gauge connections should be replaced by the appropriate analogues for virtual bundles. It was suggested by E. Witten that the appropriate geometric extension is a superconnection, which naturally incorporates the tachyon field of the unstable system. This description can be used to describe many aspects of the couplings of unstable D-branes to closed string supergravity fields. In this paper the author presents a detailed, mathematical exposition of these relationships. Particular attention is paid to the systematic derivation of the couplings of the unstable D-branes to the Ramond-Ramond tensor potentials. The analysis used in this paper relies on identifications of anomalies in the brane worldvolume quantum field theories due to the presence of chiral fermion fields. The Ramond-Ramond charges of these systems may then be determined by the appropriate modification of standard index theoretical techniques. The present approach focuses more closely on a set of generalized Dirac operators associated to the unstable D-branes, which yield an equivalent description of their geometry as that by superconnections and which serve as a probe of the low-energy open string dynamics. With this analysis, the author develops an intuitive, geometric understanding of the role of the tachyon field on non-BPS D-branes, and hence to the origins of their worldvolume effective field theories. A real virtue of the present formalism is that it enables the construction of global expressions for the worldvolume actions.