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arXiv · 2012.12277

The Stringy Origins of Galileons and their Novel Limit

Damien Easson·Tucker Manton·Maulik Parikh·Andrew Svesko
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Abstract

We show generalized Galileons -- a particular subclass of Horndeski gravity -- arise from a consistent Kaluza-Klein reduction of the low-energy effective action of heterotic string theory to first order in $\alpha'$. This suggests Horndeski theories of gravity have a string-theoretic origin. The form of the Galileonic terms is precisely fixed by parameters of the embedding spacetime, so that only a specific subset of Horndeski theories is permitted by string theory. A novel limit of the model is considered by performing a dimensionful rescaling of $\alpha'$.

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Damien Easson, Tucker Manton, Maulik Parikh, Andrew Svesko. 2020-12-22. The Stringy Origins of Galileons and their Novel Limit. https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2021/05/031

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