Dynamics of D-branes in curved backgrounds

In recent years, the study of branes has led to many new insights into string and M-theory. Much of this study was done in the large-volume regime where geometric techniques provide reliable information. The extrapolation into the stringy regime usually requires new methods from boundary conformal field theory. Branes on group manifolds give us a good handle on this issue. Although they describe non-trivial backgrounds leading to many interesting effects, they are still tractable. They also serve as building blocks in the coset and orbifold constructions of essentially all known conformal models. The present thesis investigates the dynamics of branes on group manifolds and coset models. In some limiting regime, the dynamics are governed by non-commutative gauge theories. Many of the processes can be extrapolated to the stringy regime. They manifest themselves as renormalization group flows on the two-dimensional worldsheet theories with boundaries. Such flows are of interest also in condensed matter theory where they describe boundary phenomena in one-dimensional systems. Essential data on these dynamical processes are encoded in D-brane charges. We will compare the obtained results on processes between brane configurations with the conjecture that the charges take their values in twisted K-groups.