Green-Schwarz Mechanism for String Dualities

Abstract: We determine the complete spacetime action to first order in $\alpha'$ for the massless fields of bosonic string theory compactified on a $d$-dimensional torus. A fully systematic procedure is developed that brings the action into a minimal form in which all fields apart from the metric enter only with first-order derivatives. T-duality implies that this action must have a global $\mathrm{O}(d,d,\mathbb{R})$ symmetry, and we show that this requires a Green-Schwarz type mechanism for $\alpha'$-deformed $\mathrm{O}(d,d,\mathbb{R})$ transformations. In terms of a frame formalism with ${\rm GL}(d)\times {\rm GL}(d)$ gauge symmetry this amounts to a modification of the three-form curvature by a Chern-Simons term for composite gauge fields.