Type IIB at eight derivatives: five-point axio-dilaton couplings

A bstract We study the Type IIB eight-derivative effective Lagrangian beyond the quartic level, focusing on interactions involving gravitons and axio-dilatons. We show how to translate five-point scattering amplitudes into genuine five-point contact terms and extract all perturbative contributions to the effective action. Our result is consistent with T-duality predictions at tree level in the NSNS sector. We find that couplings with an even/odd number of scalars are neutral/charged under SL(2, ℤ ), and use this feature to deduce their non-perturbative completion. The mixed NSNS/RR structures that cannot be deduced from the pure NSNS sector allow us to unambiguously fix the kinematics, which turns out to be the same for tree level and one loop. In Type IIA, these structures are essential for establishing agreement of string-theoretic corrections with the circle reduction of M-theory higher-derivative couplings.