Probing the String Winding Sector

TL;DR

This paper explores a specific winding sector of bosonic string theory using Double Field Theory, deriving an effective action that is T-duality invariant and matches string amplitude results up to third order in fluctuations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed derivation of the effective action for the winding sector in DFT, demonstrating its consistency with string theory and explicit T-duality invariance.

Findings

Effective action matches string three-point amplitudes.

Gauge fixing via generalized diffeomorphisms simplifies analysis.

The resulting theory is explicitly T-duality invariant.

Abstract

We probe a slice of the massive winding sector of bosonic string theory from toroidal compactifications of Double Field Theory (DFT). This string subsector corresponds to states containing one left and one right moving oscillators. We perform a generalized Kaluza Klein compactification of DFT on generic $2n$-dimensional toroidal constant backgrounds and show that, up to third order in fluctuations, the theory coincides with the corresponding effective theory of the bosonic string compactified on $n$-dimensional toroidal constant backgrounds, obtained from three-point amplitudes. The comparison between both theories is facilitated by noticing that generalized diffeomorphisms in DFT allow to fix generalized harmonic gauge conditions that help in identifying the physical degrees of freedom. These conditions manifest as conformal anomaly cancellation requirements on the string theory side. The explicit expression for the gauge invariant effective action containing the physical massless sector (gravity+antisymmetric+gauge+ scalar fields) coupled to towers of generalized Kaluza Klein massive states (corresponding to compact momentum and winding modes) is found. The action acquires a very compact form when written in terms of fields carrying $O(n,n)$ indices, and is explicitly T-duality invariant. The global algebra associated to the generalized Kaluza Klein compactification is discussed.