Related papers: The Lorentz Anomaly via Operator Product Expansion
Anomalies are a very powerful tool in constraining theories beyond the standard model. We give a pedagogical overview of some topics illustrating the important role played by spacetime anomalies in string theory. After discussing the…
The Regge trajectories, upon which string theory is based, behave as rigid rotators rather than vibrating strings. The same relation, between the angular momentum, and the square of the mass, can be found in gravity, the electroweak, and…
We review some of the recent developments in the construction of $W$-string theories. These are generalisations of ordinary strings in which the two-dimensional ``worldsheet'' theory, instead of being a gauging of the Virasoro algebra, is a…
In two recent papers, a new method was developed for calculating ten-dimensional superstring amplitudes with an arbitrary number of loops and external massless particles, and for expressing them in manifestly Lorentz-invariant form. By…
In a certain kinematic limit, where the effects of spacetime curvature (and other background fields) greatly simplify, the light-cone gauge world-sheet action for a type IIB superstring on AdS_5 x S^5 reduces to that of a free field theory.…
A world-sheet sigma model approach is applied to string theories dual to four-dimensional gauge theories, and semi-classical soliton solutions representing highly excited string states are identified which correspond to gauge theory…
The divergences that arise in the regularized partition function for closed bosonic string theory in flat space lead to three types of perturbation series expansions, distinguished by their genus dependence. This classification of…
Canonical quantisation of rigid particles is considered paying special attention to the restriction on phase space due to causal propagation. A mixed Lorentz-gravitational anomaly is found in the commutator of Lorentz boosts with world-line…
We try to draw lessons for higher dimensions from the string representations recently derived for large $N$ Yang-Mills theory by Gross and Taylor, Kostov, and others, and call attention to three characteristics that should be expected of a…
The past year has seen enormous progress in string theory. It has become clear that all of the different string theories are different limits of a single theory. Moreover, in certain limits, one obtains a new, eleven-dimensional structure…
An example of a consistent theory with massive higher spin fields is constructed in flat space-time of dimension three. The action is written in the light-cone gauge. The theory has certain stringy features, e.g. its spectrum is unbounded…
We construct an operator that measures the length of a curve in four-dimensional Lorentzian vacuum quantum gravity. We work in a representation in which a $SU(2)$ connection is diagonal and it is therefore surprising that the operator…
We propose a quantum gravity-extended form of the classical length contraction law obtained in Special Relativity. More specifically, the framework of our discussion is the UV self-complete theory of quantum gravity. Against this…
We study the world-volume theory of a bosonic membrane perturbatively and discuss if one can obtain any conditions on the number of space-time dimensions from the consistency of the theory. We construct an action which is suitable for such…
Considering the conformal anomaly in an effective action, the critical dimension of string theory can be decided in the harmonic gauge, in which it had been reported before to be indefinite. In this gauge, there is no anomaly for the ghost…
We realize bosonic string theory with ensembles of infinite width neural networks. The string tension is tuned by the variance of the output weights. The construction provides a new computation of the foundational Virasoro-Shapiro and…
Models with large extra dimensions offer the possibility of the Planck scale being of order the electroweak scale, thus alleviating the gauge hierarchy problem. We show that these models suffer from a breakdown of unitarity at around three…
Recently a special vortex string was found [5] in a class of soliton vortices supported in four-dimensional Yang-Mills theories that under certain conditions can become infinitely thin and can be interpreted as a critical ten-dimensional…
In the covariant-gauge two-dimensional quantum gravity, various derivations of the critical dimension D=26 of the bosonic string are critically reviewed, and their interrelations are clarified. It is shown that the string theory is not…
The history of discovery of bosonic string theory is well documented. This theory evolved as an attempt to find a multidimensional analogue of Euler's beta function. Such an analogue had in fact been known in mathematics literature at least…