Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

All-order generalized Green-Schwarz transformations

Achilleas Gitsis* and Falk Hassler†

Phys. Rev. D 113, 026026 – Published 29 January, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/clcv-3g1v

Abstract

Compatibility with T-duality severely constrains higher-derivative corrections to the low-energy supergravity limits of string theory. For example, it suggests that Lorentz transformations for heterotic strings are modified in precisely the way required for the Green-Schwarz anomaly cancellation mechanism. A systematic procedure to construct the resulting generalized Green-Schwarz transformations is the generalized Bergshoeff-de Roo identification (gBdRi) J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2018) 160; J. High Energy Phys. 01 (2021) 171. Although it in principle allows computing α′-corrections to higher and higher orders, technically it becomes unfeasible beyond α′2. We revisit this problem with an alternative approach to the gBdRi, which we have recently developed. It gives rise to a very simple all-order transformation law whose closure we verify by explicitly computing the resulting gauge algebra.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

References (27)

  1. K. A. Meissner and G. Veneziano, Symmetries of cosmological superstring vacua, Phys. Lett. B 267, 33 (1991). Manifestly O(d,d) invariant approach to space-time dependent string vacua, Mod. Phys. Lett. A 06, 3397 (1991).
  2. A. Sen, O(d)xO(d) symmetry of the space of cosmological solutions in string theory, scale factor duality and two-dimensional black holes, Phys. Lett. B 271, 295 (1991).
  3. K. A. Meissner, Symmetries of higher order string gravity actions, Phys. Lett. B 392, 298 (1997).
  4. T. Codina, O. Hohm, and D. Marques, General string cosmologies at order α’3, Phys. Rev. D 104, 106007 (2021).
  5. M. R. Garousi, Effective action of heterotic string theory at order α′2, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2023) 020.
  6. L. Wulff, Tree-level R4 correction from O(d,d): NS-NS five-point terms, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2024) 078.
  7. M. Ameri, A. Pahlavan, and M. R. Garousi, Effective action of bosonic string theory at order α′3, J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2025) 132.
  8. W. Siegel, Superspace duality in low-energy superstrings, Phys. Rev. D 48, 2826 (1993).
  9. C. Hull and B. Zwiebach, Double field theory, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2009) 099. O. Hohm, C. Hull, and B. Zwiebach, Generalized metric formulation of double field theory, 08 (2010) 008.
  10. N. Hitchin, Generalized Calabi-Yau manifolds, Q. J. Math. Oxford Ser. 54, 281 (2003).
  11. M. Gualtieri, Generalized complex geometry, Ph.D. thesis, Oxford University, 2003, arXiv:math/0401221.
  12. D. Marques and C. A. Nunez, T-duality and α’-corrections, J. High Energy Phys. 10 (2015) 084.
  13. H. Olaf, Background independent double field theory at order α′: Metric vs. Framelike geometry, Phys. Rev. D 95, 066018 (2017).
  14. D. Geissbuhler, D. Marques, C. Nunez, and V. Penas, Exploring double field theory, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2013) 101.
  15. M. B. Green and J. H. Schwarz, Anomaly cancellation in supersymmetric D=10 gauge theory and superstring theory, Phys. Lett. 149B, 117 (1984).
  16. W. H. Baron, E. Lescano, and D. Marqués, The generalized Bergshoeff-de Roo identification, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2018) 160; W. Baron and D. Marques, The generalized Bergshoeff-de Roo identification. Part II, 01 (2021) 171.
  17. S. Hronek, L. Wulff, and S. Zacarias, The α′2 correction from double field theory, J. High Energy Phys. 11 (2022) 090.
  18. A. Gitsis and F. Hassler, Unraveling the generalized Bergshoeff-de Roo identification, J. High Energy Phys. 06 (2025) 048.
  19. M. Poláček and W. Siegel, Natural curvature for manifest T-duality, J. High Energy Phys. 01 (2014) 026.
  20. D. Butter, F. Hassler, C. N. Pope, and H. Zhang, Consistent truncations and dualities, J. High Energy Phys. 04 (2023) 007.
  21. F. Hassler, D. Osten, and Y. Sakatani, Duality covariant curvatures for the heterotic string, J. High Energy Phys. 09 (2025) 031.
  22. Note that there initially has been a deviation between our results and [16]. Thanks to the help of Diego Marques and Walter Baron who kindly agreed to revisit their computation, this problem has been solved.

  23. S. Hronek and L. Wulff, O(D,D) and the string α′ expansion: An obstruction, J. High Energy Phys. 04 (2021) 013.
  24. S. W. Hsia, A. R. Kamal, and L. Wulff, No manifest T-duality at order α′3, Phys. Rev. D 111, L061904 (2025).
  25. F. Hassler and T. Rochais, α′-corrected Poisson-Lie T-duality, Fortschr. Phys. 68, 2000063 (2020).
  26. R. Borsato and L. Wulff, Quantum correction to generalized T dualities, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 201603 (2020).
  27. T. Codina and D. Marques, Generalized dualities and higher derivatives, J. High Energy Phys. 10 (2020) 002.

Outline

Information

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation