Yang-Mills Action from Open Superstring Field Theory

TL;DR

This paper derives the Yang-Mills effective action from open superstring field theory, accurately reproducing the quartic term by summing over massive states, thus connecting string theory to gauge theory.

Contribution

It provides the first precise derivation of the Yang-Mills quartic term from superstring field theory, including an analytical summation over massive states.

Findings

Achieves 75% accuracy with level zero and one contributions.

Proves the exact Yang-Mills quartic term through summation over massive states.

Establishes a direct link between superstring field theory and gauge theory.

Abstract

We calculate the effective action for nonabelian gauge bosons up to quartic order using WZW-like open superstring field theory. After including level zero and level one contributions, we obtain with 75% accuracy the Yang-Mills quartic term. We then prove that the complete effective action reproduces the exact Yang-Mills quartic term by analytically performing a summation over the intermediate massive states.