D-brane in R-R field background

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to understand the low energy effective theory ofa Dp-brane in the background of a large constant R-R (p − 1)-form field. We start with the M5-brane theory in large C-field background. The C-field background defines a 3-dimensional volume form on an M5-brane, and it is known that the low energy M5-brane theory can be described as a Nambu-Poisson gauge theory with the volume-preserving diffeomorphism symmetry (VPD). Via a double dimensional reduction we obtain a D4brane in R-R 3-form field background. This theory has both the usual U(1) gauge symmetry and the new symmetry of VPD. We find that the gauge potential for VPD is electric-magnetic dual to the U(1) gauge potential, sharing the same physical degrees of freedom. The result can be generalized to Dp-branes.