Open strings that have their end on a D-brane can be used to probe the brane's geometry. Non-commutative world-volumes emerge naturally from the scattering amplitudes of open string modes. I will start with a short discussion of branes in flat space and then introduce the microscopic techniques that are used in describing D-branes in curved backgrounds. These will be detailed at the example of branes on S^3. Finally, I will present recent results on branes in coset models and sketch some of their applications.

References :

hep-th/9908142, hep-th/0006151, hep-th/9812193, hep-th/9908040, hep-th/0003187, hep-th/0104043, hep-th/0104054, hep-th/0105038