  These notes give a pedagogical introduction to D-branes and Matrix theory.
The development of the material is based on super Yang-Mills theory, which is
the low-energy field theory describing multiple D-branes. The main goal of
these notes is to describe physical properties of D-branes in the language of
Yang-Mills theory, without recourse to string theory methods. This approach is
motivated by the philosophy of Matrix theory, which asserts that all the
physics of light-front M-theory can be described by an appropriate super
Yang-Mills theory.
