Polynomial Gauge Invariants of a Bosonic String

TL;DR

This paper constructs polynomial gauge invariants for open bosonic strings using geometric methods, explores their limitations, and discusses quantum deformations to restore BRST invariance.

Contribution

It introduces a geometric framework for polynomial gauge invariants of bosonic strings and analyzes their limitations and quantum deformations for BRST invariance restoration.

Findings

Polynomial invariants are expressed as integrals over gauge-invariant domains.

Complete polynomial invariants cannot depend solely on string zero modes.

Classical polynomial invariants break BRST cohomology structure, but quantum deformation may restore invariance.

Abstract

An open bosonic string is considered with the aim to construct a general gauge invariant, being a polynomial of Fubini-Veneziano (FV) fields. The FV fields are transformed as 1-forms on $S^1$, that allows to formulate the problem in geometric terms. We introduce a most general anzats for these invariants and explicitly resolve the invariance conditions in the framework of the anzats. The invariants are interpreted as integrals of n-form over a gauge invariant domains in an n-dimensional torus, where the invariance of these domains is considered with respect to the action of the diagonal of the group $\times (Diff~S^1)^n$. We also discuss a possibility to get a complete set of gauge invariants which allow an actual dependence on the string zero modes. We find that the complete set can't be restricted by polynomial invariants only. The classical polynomial invariants, being directly defined in the string Fock space, turn out to break the structure of the respective BRST cohomology even in the critical dimension. We discuss a possibility to restore the BRST invariance of the corresponding operator algebra by a non-trivial quantum deformation of the original invariants.