Related papers: Wilson loops and topological phases in closed stri…
We explain how perturbative string theory can be viewed as an exactly renormalizable Weyl invariant quantum mechanics in the worldsheet representation clarifying why string scattering amplitudes are both finite and unambiguously normalized…
In six dimensions there exists a unique one-parameter family of non-linear conformal electrodynamics for a chiral 2-form gauge field which includes (in a free-field limit) the linear chiral 2-form theory and is related, by dimensional…
The data of a "2D field theory with a closed string compactification" is an equivariant chain level action of a cell decomposition of the union of all moduli spaces of punctured Riemann surfaces with each component compactified as a…
Assuming that around the tachyon vacuum the kinetic term of cubic open string field theory is made purely of ghost operators we are led to gauge invariant actions which manifestly implement the absence of open string dynamics around this…
We analyze the vacuum structure of an eight-dimensional non-abelian gauge theory with a compactified four-dimensional torus as the extra dimensions. As a non-trivial background configuration of the gauge field of an $SU(n)$ gauge group, we…
It is proved the conformal invariance of the phase space formulation for topological string actions associated with the number of handles and the number of self-intersections of the world surface. Differences and similarities with the phase…
We consider supersymmetric Wilson loops a la Zarembo in planar supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories in diverse dimensions. Using perturbation theory we show that these loops have trivial vacuum expectation values to second order in the 't…
We study the properties of Wilson loops in three dimensional non-compact U(1) gauge theories with global abelian symmetries. We use duality in the continuum and on the lattice, to argue that close to the critical point between the Higgs and…
We describe a non-perturbative quantization of classical Wilson loops in the WZW model. The quantized Wilson loop is an operator acting on the Hilbert space of closed strings and commuting either with the full Kac-Moody chiral algebra or…
Using Dirac's method for the quantization of constrained systems QED is canonically quantized in the front-form in a gauge which is the light-front analog of the Weyl gauge. From the obtained vacuum wave functional the spatial Wilson loop…
QCD without matter and quantized on a light-cone spatial cylinder is considered. For the gauge group SU(N) the theory has N-1 quantum mechanical degrees of freedom, which describe the color fux that circulates around the the spatial…
Finding diffeomorphism-invariant observables to characterize the properties of gravity and spacetime at the Planck scale is essential for making progress in quantum gravity. The holonomy and Wilson loop of the Levi-Civita connection are…
We analyze non-supersymmetric four dimensional open string models of type IIB string theory compactified on $T^2\times K3$ with Scherk-Schwarz deformation acting on an $S^1$ of the $T^2$ torus. We find that there are always two solutions to…
The Makeenko-Migdal loop equation is non-linear and first order in the area derivative, but we show that for simple loops in QCD$_2$ it is possible to reformulate this equation as a linear equation with second order derivatives. This…
Witten's cubic open string field theory is expanded around the perturbatively stable vacuum, including all scalar fields at levels 0, 2, 4 and 6. The (approximate) BRST cohomology of the theory is computed, giving strong evidence for the…
We study the algebra of BPS Wilson loops in 3d gauge theories with N=2 supersymmetry and Chern-Simons terms. We argue that new relations appear on the quantum level, and that in many cases this makes the algebra finite-dimensional. We use…
The loop representation of quantum gravity has many formal resemblances to a background-free string theory. In fact, its origins lie in attempts to treat the string theory of hadrons as an approximation to QCD, in which the strings…
We discuss three dimensional compact QED with a theta term due to an axionic field. The variational gauge invariant functional is considered and it is shown that the ground state energy is independent of theta in a leading approximation.…
We exhibit a class of effective field theories that have hierarchically small Wilson coefficients for operators that are not protected by symmetries but are not finely tuned. These theories possess bounded target spaces and vacua that break…
A generating function for cabled Wilson loops in three-dimensional BF theories is defined, and a careful study of its behavior for vanishing cosmological constant is performed. This allows an exhaustive description of the unframed knot…