String Fields and the Standard Model

Abstract

The Cremmer-Scherk mechanism is generalized in a non-Abelian context. In the presence of the Higgs scalars of the standard model it is argued that fields arising from a low energy effective string action may contribute to the mass generation of the observed vector bosons that mediate the electroweak interactions, and that future analyses of experimental data should consider the possibility of string induced radiative corrections to the Weinberg angle coming from physics beyond the standard model.