Stringy Gauge Structures

Abstract

A field theory action, able to incorporate stringy gauge symmetry enhancement-breaking effects, which occur at particular points of moduli space in a heterotic string toroidal compactification framework, was previously constructed from three-point interactions and duality symmetries. Via doubled periodic coordinates and a non-commutative product, it encodes the non-Abelian structure in a background-independent form. Moduli-space dependence becomes manifest upon performing a generalized mode expansion. Here we further elaborate on this construction. In particular, we propose field transformations for the retained sectors that make up the foundations of a potential symmetry of the action and that, when mode expanded at enhancement points in moduli space, contain the usual non-Abelian gauge transformations. We also examine the covariance of the corresponding scalar derivative structures. Although the proposal must be regarded as a truncated version of a full, presently unknown field-theory description, it already encodes representations of massless and massive states containing up to one oscillator excitation. Finally, we relate the construction to gauged DFT with an extended tangent space by associating generalized Kaluza-Klein modes considered here with additional generalized-frame directions. At enhancement, their brackets reproduce the enhanced gauge algebra; away from enhancement, the same algebraic structure is recovered by rotating the Cartan basis.