Related papers: Ghost Structure and Closed Strings in Vacuum Strin…
String theories should reduce to ordinary four-dimensional field theories at low energies. Yet the formulation of the two are so different that such a connection, if it exists, is not immediately obvious. With the Schwinger proper-time…
Any attempt to regularize a negative tension brane through a bulk scalar requires that this field is a ghost. One can try to improve in this aspect in a number of ways. For instance, it has been suggested to employ a field whose kinetic…
We discuss the construction of boundary contributions to free string field theory actions in the context of the bosonic string. We show that it is generally possible to obtain a well-defined variational principle by adding a simple boundary…
We find that tachyonic orbifold examples of AdS/CFT have corresponding instabilities at small radius, and can decay to more generic gauge theories. We do this by computing a destabilizing Coleman-Weinberg effective potential for twisted…
Auxiliary string fields are introduced in light-cone gauge string field theory in order to express contact interactions as contractions of cubic vertices. The auxiliary field in the purely closed-string bosonic theory may be given a…
A quantum effective action for gauge field theories is constructed that is gauge invariant and independent of the choice of gauge breaking terms and the ghost determinant.
The split string formalism offers a simple template upon which we can build many generalizations of Schnabl's analytic solution of open string field theory. In this paper we consider two such generalizations: one which replaces the wedge…
Symmetry transformations of the space-time fields of string theory are generated by certain similarity transformations of the stress-tensor of the associated conformal field theories. This observation is complicated by the fact that, as we…
We give the first construction of covariant coherent closed string states, which may be identified with fundamental cosmic strings. We outline the requirements for a string state to describe a cosmic string, and using DDF operators provide…
In this paper, two things are done. (i) First, it is shown that any global symmetry of a gauge-invariant theory can be extended to the ghosts and the antifields so as to leave invariant the solution of the master-equation (before gauge…
A review of various aspects of superstrings in background electromagnetic fields is presented. Topics covered include the Born-Infeld action, spectrum of open strings in background gauge fields, the Schwinger mechanism, finite-temperature…
Spectra of a string in $ SL(2,R) $ and three dimensional (BTZ) black hole geometry are discussed. We consider a free field realization of ^sl (2,R) different from the standard ones in treatment of zero-modes. Applying this to the string…
A recently proposed connection between closed string field and an open Wilson line defined on an arbitrary contour is further explored here. We suggest that reparametrization invariance of a Wilson line is the principle which determines the…
We study the S-matrix elements of the gauge invariant operators corresponding to on-shell closed strings, in open string field theory. In particular, we calculate the tree level S-matrix element of two ${\it arbitrary}$ closed strings, and…
String theory one-loop threshold corrections are studied in a background field approach due to Kiritsis and Kounnas which uses space-time curvature as an infrared regulator. We review the conformal field theory aspects using the…
We attempt to understand the fate of spacelike gravitational singularities in string theory via the quantum stress tensor for string matter in a fixed background. We first approximate the singularity with a homogeneous anisotropic…
This elementary introduction to string field theory highlights the features and the limitations of this approach to quantum gravity as it is currently understood. String field theory is a formulation of string theory as a field theory in…
We define a sequence of VSFT D-branes whose low energy limit leads exactly to a corresponding sequence of GMS solitons. The D-branes are defined by acting on a fixed VSFT lump with operators defined by means of Laguerre polynomials whose…
We investigate the stability against inhomogeneous perturbations and the appearance of ghost modes in Gauss-Bonnet gravitational theories with a non-minimally coupled scalar field, which can be regarded as either the dilaton or a…
Misner space, also known as the Lorentzian orbifold $R^{1,1}/boost$, is one of the simplest examples of a cosmological singularity in string theory. In this work, the study of weakly coupled closed strings on this space is pursued in…