Perturbative double field theory on general backgrounds

We develop the perturbation theory of double field theory around arbitrary solutions of its field equations. The exact gauge transformations are written in a manifestly background covariant way and contain at most quadratic terms in the field fluctuations. We expand the generalized curvature scalar...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Hohm, Olaf, Marques, Diego
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2016
Country:Argentina
Institution:Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Repository:CONICET Digital (CONICET)
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ri.conicet.gov.ar:11336/18130
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/11336/18130
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Double Field Theory
String Dualities
Group Manifolds
Wess-Zumino-Witten
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/1.3
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/1
Description
Summary:We develop the perturbation theory of double field theory around arbitrary solutions of its field equations. The exact gauge transformations are written in a manifestly background covariant way and contain at most quadratic terms in the field fluctuations. We expand the generalized curvature scalar to cubic order in fluctuations and thereby determine the cubic action in a manifestly background covariant form. As a first application we specialize this theory to group manifold backgrounds, such as SU(2)≃S3 with H-flux. In the full string theory this corresponds to a Wess-Zumino-Witten background CFT. Starting from closed string field theory, the cubic action around such backgrounds has been computed before by Blumenhagen, Hassler, and Lüst. We establish precise agreement with the cubic action derived from double field theory. This result confirms that double field theory is applicable to arbitrary curved background solutions, disproving assertions in the literature to the contrary.