Decay widths of lowest massive Regge excitations of open strings

Abstract

With the advent of the LHC there is widespread interest in the discovery potential for physics beyond the standard model. In TeV-scale open string theory, the new physics can be manifest in the excitation and decay of new resonant structures, corresponding to Regge recurrences of standard model particles. An essential input for the prediction of invariant mass spectra of the decay products (which could serve to identify the resonance as a string excitation) are the partial and total widths of the decay products. We present a parameter-free calculation of these widths for the first Regge recurrence of the SU ( 3 ) gluon octet, of the U ( 1 ) gauge boson which accompanies gluons in D-brane constructions, and of the quark triplet.