BRANE BOXES - BENDING AND BETA-FUNCTIONS - ART. NO. 105005

We study the type-IIB brane box configurations recently introduced by Hanany and Zaffaroni. We show that even at finite string coupling, one can construct smooth configurations of branes with a fairly arbitrary gauge and flavor structure. Limiting our attention to the better unde rstood case where NS-branes do not intersect over a four dimensional s urface gives some restrictions on the theories, but still permits many examples, both anomalous and non-anomalous. We give several explicit examples of such configurations and discuss what constraints can be im posed on brane-box theories from bending considerations. We also discu ss the relation between brane bending and beta functions for brane-box configurations. [S0556-2821(98)05720-8].