Abelian and nonabelian vector field effective actions from string field theory

TL;DR

This paper derives the leading terms of the effective action for massless bosonic open string fields, showing they match the Born-Infeld theories with derivative corrections, through integrating out massive string modes.

Contribution

It provides a derivation of the abelian and nonabelian effective actions from string field theory, including derivative corrections, using field redefinitions.

Findings

Effective actions match Born-Infeld theories

Includes covariant derivative corrections

Reproduces leading terms in both abelian and nonabelian cases

Abstract

The leading terms in the tree-level effective action for the massless fields of the bosonic open string are calculated by integrating out all massive fields in Witten's cubic string field theory. In both the abelian and nonabelian theories, field redefinitions make it possible to express the effective action in terms of the conventional field strength. The resulting actions reproduce the leading terms in the abelian and nonabelian Born-Infeld theories, and include (covariant) derivative corrections.