D-brane models with non-linear supersymmetry

We study a class of type I string models with supersymmetry broken on the world-volume of some D-branes and vanishing tree-level potential. Despite the non-supersymmetric spectrum, supersymmetry is non-linearly realized on these D-branes, while it is spontaneously broken in the bulk by Scherk-Schwarz boundary conditions. These models can easily accommodate 3-branes with interesting gauge groups and chiral fermions. We also study the effective field theory and in particular we compute the four-fermion couplings of the localized goldstino with the matter fermions on the brane. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.