D-branes in a topologically nontrivial \(B\)-field (Q5929541)

The global worldsheet anomalies for open strings ending on several coincident D-branes in the presence of a \(B\)-field and arbitrary metric are studied. It is shown that cancellation of anomalies is made possible by the correlation between the t'Hooft magnetic flux on the D-branes and the topological class of the \(B\)-field, that is \(W_{3}(N)+\beta '(y)=[H]_{Q}\), where \(N\) is the normal bundle, \(W_{3}(N)\in H^{3}(Q,{\mathbb Z}) \) is the image of the second Stiefel-Whitney class under the Bockstein homomorphism \(\beta ':H^{2}(Q,{{\mathbb Z}_{n}})\rightarrow H^{3}(Q,{\mathbb Z})\), and so \(\beta '(y)\in H^{3}(Q,{\mathbb Z})\) is an obstruction, \([H]\) is the integer cohomology class whose de Rham representative is \(H=dB\), and \([H]_{Q}\) is its restriction to a submanifold \(Q\). Thus the geometric nature of the gauge field living on D-branes is more general: rather than being a connection on a vector bundle, it is a connection on a module \(\Gamma \) over a certain noncommutative (Azumaya) algebra. The gluing functions \(g_{ij}\) of the vector bundle satisfy \(g_{ij}g_{jk}g_{ki}=\alpha_{ijk}\) instead of \(g_{ij}g_{jk}g_{ki}=1\) on \({\mathcal U}_{i}\cap {\mathcal U}_{j}\cap {\mathcal U}_{k}\), where \(\Lambda _{ij}+\Lambda _{jk}+\Lambda _{ki}=-\sqrt{-1}d\log \alpha _{ijk}\), and \(B_{j}-B_{i}=d\Lambda _{ij}\), \(\Lambda _{ij}\) are real 1-forms. The case of a worldsheet with a boundary is also considered. These constructions are responsible for the appearance of twisted \(K\)-groups \(K_{H}\) in string theory.