Testing the $\alpha'{}^3$ term in the non-abelian open superstring effective action

TL;DR

This paper tests a recent proposal for the non-abelian open superstring effective action at order ^3 by comparing the predicted spectrum in magnetic backgrounds to string theory results, confirming the proposal's accuracy.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed spectrum calculation validating the ^3 order non-abelian superstring effective action proposal.

Findings

The spectrum matches string theory predictions perfectly.

Other proposals fail to reproduce the spectrum accurately.

Confirms the correctness of the ^3 order effective action.

Abstract

Recently, a proposal for the full non-abelian open superstring effective action through ${\cal O}(\alpha'{}^3)$ has been formulated in {\tt hep-th/0108169}. We test this result by calculating the spectrum in the presence of constant magnetic background fields and by comparing the result to string theoretic predictions. The agreement is perfect. Other proposals for the superstring effective action through this order do not reproduce the spectrum correctly.