Massive Vertex Operators and Conformal Algebra of the Bosonic Open String Theory in Flat Space-time

A systematic scheme is developed for solving conformal algebra of the massive vertex operators in the old covariant first quantized string theory. Using the first massive level in the covariant spectrum of bosonic open string theory in flat space-time as an example, we explicitly verify the conformal algebra for the normal-ordered covariant vertex operator. We emphasize that the requirement of fully covariant gauge-fixing specifies the form of normal-ordering for massive vertex operators.