D-branes and the noncommutative torus

Abstract

We show that in certain superstring compactifications, gauge theories on noncommutative tori will naturally appear as D-brane world-volume theories. This gives strong evidence that they are well-defined quantum theories. It also gives a physical derivation of the identification proposed by Connes, Douglas and Schwarz of Matrix theory compactification on the noncommutative torus with M theory compactification with constant background three-form tensor field.