Related papers: The Feynman $i \epsilon$ in String Theory
We consider a quantum field theory on a spherically symmetric quantum space time described by loop quantum gravity. The spin network description of space time in such a theory leads to equations for the quantum field that are discrete. We…
String scattering amplitudes in the high energy asymptotic region have been studied by saddle point approximation. Recently, it was pointed out that infinitely many complex saddles contribute to string amplitudes even at tree-level after…
In these lecture notes, we take a closer look at the calculation of scattering amplitudes for the bosonic string. It is believed that string theories form the UV completions of (super)gravity theories. Support for this claim can be found in…
These are the lecture notes of the introductory String Theory course held by one of the authors for the master program of Theoretical Physics at Turin University. The world-sheet approach to String Theory is pedagogically introduced in the…
A non supersymmetric string background, directly derived from the string soft dilaton theorem, is used to compute, in the semiclassical approximation, the expectation value of Wilson loops in static gauge. The resulting potential shares…
The traditional formulation of string amplitudes via worldsheet integrals provides a parametrization of the moduli space that fails to expose the complete singularity structure of the amplitudes. This problem is solved by the positive…
In addition to being a prime candidate for a fundamental unified theory of all interactions in nature, string theory provides a natural setting to understand gauge field theories. This is linked to the concept of "D-branes": extended,…
We consider, in a string theory framework, physical processes of phenomenological interest in models with a low string scale. The amplitudes we study involve tree-level virtual gravitational exchange, divergent in a field-theoretical…
This book provides an introduction to string field theory (SFT). String theory is usually formulated in the worldsheet formalism, which describes a single string (first-quantization). While this approach is intuitive and could be pushed far…
The presence of fields with negative mass-squared typically leads to some form of instability in standard field theories. The observation that, at least in the light-cone gauge, strings propagating in plane wave spacetimes can have…
We discuss an aspect of string theory which has been tackled from many different perspectives, but incompletely: the role of nonlocality in the theory and its relation to the geometric shape of the string. In particular, we will describe in…
These lecture notes provide a self-contained introduction to Euler integrals, which are frequently encountered in applications. In particle physics, they arise as Feynman integrals or string amplitudes. Our four selected topics demonstrate…
We propose the use of lattice field theory for the study of string field theory at the non-perturbative quantum level. We identify many potential obstacles and examine possible resolutions thereof. We then experiment with our approach in…
We comment on the relation between string theory and empirical science, grounding our discussion in cosmology, a subject with increasingly precise data in which this connection operates at several levels. It is important to take into…
We investigate the most general phase space of configurations, consisting of all possible ways of assigning elementary attributes, ``energies'', to elementary positions, ``cells''. We discuss how this space possesses structures that can be…
A closed string worldsheet of genus $g$ with $n$ punctures can be presented as a contact interaction in which $n$ semi-infinite cylinders are glued together in a specific way via the Strebel differential on it, if $n\geq1,\ 2g-2+n>0$. We…
We study the scattering of a massless and neutral test particle in the gravitational field of a body (the string star) made of a large number of scalar states of the superstring. We consider two cases, the one in which these states are…
In this note we follow the historical development of the ideas that led to the formulation of String Theory. We start from the inspired guess of Veneziano and its extension to the scattering of $N$ scalar particles, then we describe how the…
The Matrix String Theory, i.e. the two dimensional U(N) SYM with N=(8,8) supersymmetry, has classical BPS solutions that interpolate between an initial and a final string configuration via a bordered Riemann surface. The Matrix String…
We recently proposed a chameleonic solution to the cosmological constant problem - Phys. Rev. D82 (2010) 044006. We further elaborate on our proposal discussing also some new results. The basic ingredients of the model are A) a chameleonic…