Super-Pohlmeyer invariants and boundary states for non-abelian gauge fields

Aspects of the supersymmetric extension of the Pohlmeyer invariants are studied, and their relation to superstring boundary states for non-abelian gauge fields is discussed. We show that acting with a super-Pohlmeyer invariant with respect to some non-abelian gauge field A (which has to be constant due to the definition of the Pohlmeyer invariants) on the boundary state of a bare D9 brane produces the boundary state describing that non-abelian background gauge field on the brane if the only non-trivial commutators among the components of A are those involving a single light-like component. Known consistency conditions on that boundary state equivalent to the background equations of motion for A hence also apply to the quantized Pohlmeyer invariants. (author)