Self-duality, Ramond-Ramond fields and K-theory

Creators: Moore, Gregory; Witten, Edward

Abstract

Just as D-brane charge of type-IIA and type-IIB superstrings is classified, respectively, by K-1(X) and K(X), Ramond-Ramond fields in these theories are classified, respectively, by K(X) and K-1(X). By analyzing a recent proposal for how to interpret quantum self-duality of RR fields, we show that the Dirac quantization formula for the RR p-forms, when properly formulated, receives corrections that reflect curvature, lower brane charges, and an anomaly of D-brane world-volume fermions. The K-theory framework is important here, because the term involving the fermion anomaly cannot be naturally expressed in terms of cohomology and differential forms.

Additional Information

© Institute of Physics and IOP Publishing Limited 2000. Received 12 April 2000, accepted for publication 17 May 2000. Published 13 June 2000. Work of GM was supported in part by DOE grant DE-FG-02-92ER40704. GM also thanks the Institute for Advanced Study for hospitality and the Monell Foundation for support during the initiation of this work. Work of EW was supported in part by NSF Grant PHY-9513835 and the Caltech Discovery Fund. We are grateful to D. Freed and M. J. Hopkins for encouraging us to express everything in terms of K-theory, and to M. F. Atiyah, D. Freed, M. J. Hopkins, G. Segal, and I. Singer for detailed explanations of a variety of mathematical points. We also thank E. Diaconescu for discussions about RR fields.

Files

MOOjhep00.pdf

Files (443.7 kB)

Name	Size	Download all
MOOjhep00.pdf md5:7df0509f8812dd8d3cb2469e4e31dcd1	443.7 kB	Preview Download

Additional details

	All versions	This version
Views	0	0
Downloads	0	0
Data volume	0 Bytes	0 Bytes