Universal aspects of string propagation on curved backgrounds
High Energy Physics - Theory
2016-08-24 v2
Abstract
String propagation on D-dimensional curved backgrounds with Lorentzian signature is formulated as a geometrical problem of embedding surfaces. When the spatial part of the background corresponds to a general WZW model for a compact group, the classical dynamics of the physical degrees of freedom is governed by the coset conformal field theory SO(D-1)/SO(D-2), which is universal irrespective of the particular WZW model. The same holds for string propagation on D-dimensional flat space. The integration of the corresponding Gauss-Codazzi equations requires the introduction of (non-Abelian) parafermions in differential geometry.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-th/9604195,
title = {Universal aspects of string propagation on curved backgrounds},
author = {I. Bakas and K. Sfetsos},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9604195},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
15 pages, latex. Typo in Eq. (2.12) is corrected. Version to be published in Phys. Rev. D