General Linear Gauges and Amplitudes in Open String Field Theory

TL;DR

This paper investigates a broad class of linear gauges in open string field theory, providing a unified framework for gauge fixing, propagator construction, and amplitude calculation, ensuring gauge independence of physical results.

Contribution

It introduces a general class of linear gauges in open string field theory, unifying known gauges and establishing a consistent amplitude calculation procedure.

Findings

Unified framework for various gauges including Siegel and Schnabl gauges.

Derived a general form of propagators with common features.

Proved gauge independence of on-shell physical amplitudes.

Abstract

A general class of gauges for open string field theory, for which the gauge fixing condition is given by linear equations with respect to string field, is investigated in detail. This class of gauges includes almost all known ones like Siegel gauge and its various extensions such as a-gauges proposed by the present authors as well as Schnabl gauge and linear b-gauges. A general form of propagators is determined and their common features are analyzed. A consistent procedure for calculating the amplitudes is given. Gauge independence of the on-shell physical amplitudes is explicitly shown.