D-branes on group manifolds Original Research Article

Possible Dirichlet boundary states for WZW models with untwisted affine super Kac-Moody symmetry are classified for all compact simple Lie groups. They are obtained by inner- and outerautomorphisms of the group. The D-brane world-volume turns out to be a group manifold of a symmetric subgroup, so that the moduli space of D-branes is locally isomorphic to an irreducible Riemannian symmetric space. It is also clarified how these D-branes are transformed into each other under abelian T-duality of the WZW model. Our result implies, for example, that there is no D-particle on the compact simple group manifold. When the D-brane world-volume contains an S1 factor, the D-brane moduli space becomes locally isomorphic to a hermitian symmetric space and open string world-sheet instantons are allowed.