Mixed boundary conditions and brane-string bound states Original Research Article

We consider open strings with mixed boundary conditions (a combination of Neumann and Dirichlet conditions at each end). We discuss how their end points show a Dp-brane with NS-NS charge, i.e. a bound state of a D-brane with a fundamental string. We show that these branes are BPS saturated. In the case of one-branes, we show that their mass densities are in agreement with IIb SUGRA which is Sl(2, Z) invariant. Using Chan-Paton factors, we extend our results to the case of bound states of n D-strings and m F-strings. These string theoretic results are also checked in the effective field theory limit.