English

Hausdorff dimension of a quantum string

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-10-30 v1

Abstract

In the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, Feynman and Hibbs noted that the trajectory of a particle is continuous but nowhere differentiable. We extend this result to the quantum mechanical path of a relativistic string and find that the ``trajectory'', in this case, is a fractal surface with Hausdorff dimension three. Depending on the resolution of the detecting apparatus, the extra dimension is perceived as ``fuzziness'' of the string world-surface. We give an interpretation of this phenomenon in terms of a new form of the uncertainty principle for strings, and study the transition from the smooth to the fractal phase.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/9705010,
  title  = {Hausdorff dimension of a quantum string},
  author = {S. Ansoldi and A. Aurilia and E. Spallucci},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9705010},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

18 pages, non figures, ReVTeX 3.0, in print on Phys.Rev.D

R2 v1 2026-07-22T16:04:50.764Z