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Open-string effective actions

Thesis/Dissertation ·
OSTI ID:5178378

The effective actions for various modes of open bosonic and superstrings are investigated. Consistent equations of motion for spin-1 fields (both neutral and charged) are derived from the bosonic string in a background field using BRST invariance. These equations are linear in the propagating field and exact in the background field, and come from gauge symmetry breaking of an underlying non-abelian generalization of the Born-Infeld lagrangian. The terms to order (a{prime}){sup 4} of this lagrangian are determined from the linearized string equations. The field equations and the lagrangian for the spin-2 massive bosonic string states in an abelian electromagnetic background are also derived. Their construction provides a generalization of the free Fierz-Pauli lagrangian. The Fischler-Susskind mechanism in the operator formalism is described for closed bosonic string tadpoles, and for superstring amplitudes factorizing at a spin node. Terms in the equations of motion for the massless antisymmetric tensor field of the type I superstring are derived using this framework. In particular, the requirement of BRST invariance for the sum of sphere, disk, and crosscap amplitudes is used to determine coefficients of anomaly-cancelling terms in the effective action in agreement with the predictions of the Green-Schwarz anomaly-cancellation mechanism.

Research Organization:
Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
OSTI ID:
5178378
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English