D-brane effective field theory from string field theory

TL;DR

This paper uses open string field theory and level truncation to derive effective actions for D-brane fields, validating the approach with calculations that show good convergence and exploring implications for nonabelian Born-Infeld theory and tachyon condensation.

Contribution

It demonstrates the effectiveness of level truncation in deriving D-brane effective actions from string field theory and connects string theory results with gauge theory descriptions.

Findings

Level truncation converges within 2-4% for key terms up to level 20.

Successful calculation of quartic terms for tachyon and gauge fields.

Links string field theory with gauge theory descriptions of tachyon condensation.

Abstract

Open string field theory is considered as a tool for deriving the effective action for the massless or tachyonic fields living on D-branes. Some simple calculations are performed in open bosonic string field theory which validate this approach. The level truncation method is used to calculate successive approximations to the quartic terms \phi^4, (A^\mu A_\mu)^2 and [A_\mu, A_\nu]^2 for the zero momentum tachyon and gauge field on one or many bosonic D-branes. We find that the level truncation method converges for these terms within 2-4% when all massive fields up to level 20 are integrated out, although the convergence is slower than exponential. We discuss the possibility of extending this work to determine the structure of the nonabelian Born-Infeld theory describing the gauge field on a system of many parallel bosonic or supersymmetric D-branes. We also describe a brane configuration in which tachyon condensation arises in both the gauge theory and string field theory pictures. This provides a natural connection between recent work of Sen and Zwiebach on tachyon condensation in string field theory and unstable vacua in super Yang-Mills and Born-Infeld field theory.