D-branes, derived categories, and Grothendieck groups Original Research Article

In this paper we describe how Grothendieck groups of coherent sheaves and locally free sheaves can be used to describe type II D-branes, in the case that all D-branes are wrapped on complex varieties and all connections are holomorphic. Our proposal is in the same spirit as recent discussions of K-theory and D-branes; within the restricted class mentioned, Grothendieck groups encode a choice of connection on each D-brane world-volume, in addition to information about the C∞ bundles. We also point out that derived categories can also be used to give insight into D-brane constructions, and analyze how a Z2 subset of the T-duality group acting on D-branes on tori can be understood in terms of a Fourier–Mukai transformation.