<p>The appearance in string theory of higher-dimensional objects known as D-branes has been a source of much of the interesting developements in the subject during the past ten years. A very interesting phenomenon occurs when several of these D-branes are made to coincide: The abelian gauge theory living on each brane is enhanced to a non-abelian gauge theory living on the stack of coincident branes. This gives rise to interesting effects like the natural appearance of non-commutative geometry. The theory governing the dynamics of these coincident branes is still poorly understood however and only hints of the underlying structure have been seen.</p><p>This thesis focuses on an attempt to better this understanding by writing down actions for coincident branes using so-called boundary fermions, originating in considerations of open strings, instead of matrices to describe the non-abelian fields. It is shown that by gauge-fixing and by suitably quantizing these boundary fermions the non-abelian action that is known, the Myers action, can be reproduced. Furthermore it is shown that under natural assumptions, unlike the Myers action, the action formulated using boundary fermions also posseses kappa-symmetry, the criterion for being the correct supersymmetric action for coincident D-branes.</p><p>Another aspect of string theory discussed in this thesis is that of tensionless strings. These are of great interest for example because of their possible relation to higher spin gauge theories via the AdS/CFT-correspondence. The tensionless superstring in a plane wave background, arising as a particular limit of the near-horizon geometry of a stack of D3-branes, is considered and compared to the tensile case.</p>

<p>&nbsp / </p> <p align="left">The groups we consider in this study belong to the class <font face="F30">X</font><font face="F25" size="1"><font face="F25" size="1">0 </font></font><font face="F15">of all finitely generated groups with finite commutator subgroups.</font></p>

The appearance in string theory of higher-dimensional objects known as D-branes has been a source of much of the interesting developements in the subject during the past ten years. A very interesting phenomenon occurs when several of these D-branes are made to coincide: The abelian gauge theory living on each brane is enhanced to a non-abelian gauge theory living on the stack of coincident branes. This gives rise to interesting effects like the natural appearance of non-commutative geometry. The theory governing the dynamics of these coincident branes is still poorly understood however and only hints of the underlying structure have been seen. This thesis focuses on an attempt to better this understanding by writing down actions for coincident branes using so-called boundary fermions, originating in considerations of open strings, instead of matrices to describe the non-abelian fields. It is shown that by gauge-fixing and by suitably quantizing these boundary fermions the non-abelian action that is known, the Myers action, can be reproduced. Furthermore it is shown that under natural assumptions, unlike the Myers action, the action formulated using boundary fermions also posseses kappa-symmetry, the criterion for being the correct supersymmetric action for coincident D-branes. Another aspect of string theory discussed in this thesis is that of tensionless strings. These are of great interest for example because of their possible relation to higher spin gauge theories via the AdS/CFT-correspondence. The tensionless superstring in a plane wave background, arising as a particular limit of the near-horizon geometry of a stack of D3-branes, is considered and compared to the tensile case.

Sea R un anillo asociativo no unitario. Un módulo M se dice firme si es isomorfo de forma canónica al producto tensorial sobre R de R por M. La categoría formada por los módulos firmes es una generalización natural de la categoría de módulos unitarios para anillos unitarios.Una propiedad fundamental y que permanecía como problema abierto era la abelianidad de la categoría de módulos firmes. En la memoria se prueba que en general la categoría no es abeliana, mostrando un ejemplo de anillo asociativo R y de un monomorfismo que no es núcleo de ningún otro morfismo de la categoría. Se realiza un estudio profundo de la categoría de módulos firmes y de multitud de propiedades equivalentes a la abelianidad, así como otras propiedades más débiles y que tampoco se cumplen en general. / Let R a nonunital ring. A module M is set to be firm if it is isomorphic in the canonical way to the tensor product about R of R by M. The category of firm modules generalizes the usual category of unital modules for a unital ring.It was a open problem if the category of firm modules is an abelian category. We prove that, in general, this category is not abelian, and we find a ring and a monomorphism that is not a kernel in this category. The category of firm modules has been estudied in detail. We have deeply analyzed several properties equivalent to be abelian, and some others with weaker restrictions that are not satisfied in general

Let K/Fq be an algebraic function field with full constant field Fq and genus g. Then the divisor class number hK of K/Fq is the order of the quotient group, D0K /P(K), degree zero divisors of K over principal divisors of K. The classification of the function fields K with hK = 1 is done by MacRea, Leitzel, Madan and Queen and the classification of the extensions with class number two is done by Le Brigand. Determination of the necessary and the sufficient conditions for a function field to have class number three is done by H&uml / ulya T&uml / ore. Let k := Fq(T) be the rational function field over the finite field Fq with q elements. For a polynomial N &isin / Fq[T], we construct the Nth cyclotomic function field KN. Cyclotomic function fields were investigated by Carlitz, studied by Hayes, M. Rosen, M. Bilhan and many other mathematicians. Classification of cyclotomic function fields and subfields of cyclotomic function fields with class number one is done by Kida, Murabayashi, Ahn and Jung. Also the classification of function fields with genus one and classification of those with class number two is done by Ahn and Jung. In this thesis, we classified all algebraic function fields and subfields of cyclotomic function fields over finite fields with class number three.

<p>&nbsp / </p> <p align="left">The groups we consider in this study belong to the class <font face="F30">X</font><font face="F25" size="1"><font face="F25" size="1">0 </font></font><font face="F15">of all finitely generated groups with finite commutator subgroups.</font></p>

The character table of any finite group provides a considerable amount of information about a group and the use of character tables is of great importance in Mathematics and Physical Sciences. Most of the maximal subgroups of finite simple groups and their automorphisms are extensions of elementary abelian groups. Various techniques have been used to compute character tables, however Bernd Fischer came up with the most powerful and informative technique of calculating character tables of group extensions. This method is known as the Fischer-Clifford Theory and uses Fischer-Clifford matrices, as one of the tools, to compute character tables. This is derived from the Clifford theory. Here G is an extension of a group N by a finite group G, that is G = N.G. We then construct a non-singular matrix for each conjugacy class of G/N =G. These matrices, together with partial character tables of certain subgroups of G, known as the inertia groups, are used to compute the full character table of G. In this dissertation, we discuss Fischer-Clifford theory and apply it to both split and non-split extensions. We first, under the guidance of Dr Mpono, studied the group 27:S8 as a maximal subgroup of 27:SP(6,2), to familiarize ourselves to Fischer-Clifford theory. We then looked at 26:A8 and 28:O+8 (2) as maximal subgroups of 28:O+8 (2) and O+10(2) respectively and these were both split extensions. Split extensions have also been discussed quite extensively, for various groups, by different researchers in the past. We then turned our attention to non-split extensions. We started with 24.S6 and 25.S6 which were maximal subgroups of HS and HS:2 respectively. Except for some negative signs in the first column of the Fischer-Clifford matrices we used the Fisher-Clifford theory as it is. The Fischer-Clifford theory, is also applied to 53.L(3, 5), which is a maximal subgroup of the Lyon's group Ly. To be able to use the Fisher-Clifford theory we had to consider projective representations and characters of inertia factor groups. This is not a simple method and quite some smart computations were needed but we were able to determine the character table of 53.L(3,5). All character tables computed in this dissertation will be sent to GAP for incorporation. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.

Includes bibliographical references / 123, [10] leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Pure Mathematics, 1984

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [51]-52).

Thesis (M.A.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Mathematical Sciences, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.