The effective action for the 4-point functions in abelian open superstring theory

Abstract

We construct the derivative corrections to the four-point vertices in the abelian open string effective action to all orders in alpha'. The result is based on the structure of the string four-point function. Supersymmnetry of these vertices is guaranteed by the supersymmetry of the F^4 term in the effective action. By this construction we establish the existence of an infinite number of supersymmetry invariants, the number of invariants at order alpha'^n grows linearly with n.

11 pages, 1 figure, v2: additional remarks in Section 5, added references, v3: additional remarks in Section 4 and minor corrections