Probing the String Winding Sector

Understand

We probe a slice of the massive winding sector of bosonic string theory from toroidal compactifications of Double Field Theory (DFT).

• This string subsector corresponds to states containing one left and one right moving oscillators.
• We perform a generalized Kaluza Klein compactification of DFT on generic $2n$-dimensional toroidal constant backgrounds and show that, up to third order in fluctuations, the theory coincides with the corresponding effective theory of the bosonic string compactified on $n$-dimensional toroidal constant backgrounds, obtained from three-point amplitudes.
• The comparison between both theories is facilitated by noticing that generalized diffeomorphisms in DFT allow to fix generalized harmonic gauge conditions that help in identifying the physical degrees of freedom.