T-duality invariant effective actions at orders α′,α′2 \alpha', \alpha'^2

We use compatibility of the $D$-dimensional effective actions for diagonal metric and for dilaton with the T-duality when theory is compactified on a circle, to find the the $D$-dimensional couplings of curvatures and dilaton as well as the higher derivative corrections to the $(D-1)$-dimensional Buscher rules at orders $\alpha'$ and $\alpha'^2$. We observe that the T-duality constraint on the effective actions fixes the covariant effective actions at each order of $\alpha'$ up to field redefinitions and up to an overall factor. Inspired by these results, we speculate that the $D$-dimensional effective actions at any order of $\alpha'$ must be consistent with the standard Buscher rules provided that one uses covariant field redefinitions in the corresponding reduced $(D-1)$-dimensional effective actions. This constraint may be used to find effective actions at all higher orders of $\alpha'$.Comment: 24 pages, latex file, no figure; v2: major modifications; v3: the version appears in JHE

Sphere-level Ramond-Ramond couplings in Ramond-Neveu-Schwarz formalism

We calculate in details the sphere-level scattering amplitude of two Ramond-Ramond (RR) and two Neveu-Schwarz-Neveu-Schwarz (NSNS) vertex operators in type II superstring theories in Ramond-Neveu-Schwarz (RNS) formalism. We then compare the expansion of this amplitude at order $\alpha'^3$ with the eight-derivative couplings of the gravity and B-field that have been recently found based on S-dual and T-dual Ward identities. We find exact agreement. Moreover, using the above S-matrix element, we have found various couplings involving the dilaton field, and shown that they are also fully consistent with these Ward identities.Comment: 34 pages, Latex file, no figure; v3: the version appears in np