Related papers: The Light Cone in String Theory
These four lectures, addressed to an audience of graduate students in experimental high energy physics, survey some of the basic concepts in string theory. The purpose is to convey a general sense of what string theory is and what it has…
We investigate the field theory of strings having as a target space an arbitrary discrete one-dimensional manifold. The existence of the continuum limit is guaranteed if the target space is a Dynkin diagram of a simply laced Lie algebra or…
Toroidal backgrounds for bosonic strings are used to understand target space duality as a symmetry of string field theory and to study explicitly issues in background independence. Our starting point is the notion that the string field…
Causality is studied in the covariant formulation of free string field theory (SFT). We find that, though the string field in the covariant formulation is a functional of the ghost coordinates as well as the space-time coordinate and the…
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,…
String theory is canonically accompanied with a space-time interpretation which determines S-matrix-like observables, and connects to the standard physics at low energies in the guise of local effective field theory. Recently, we have…
The central theme of this thesis is noncommutativity in string theory. We explore in detail how noncommutative structures can emerge in case of the interacting bosonic string and even in the fermionic sector of superstring theory. We have…
We discuss supersymmetry breaking mechanisms at the level of low energy N=1 effective heterotic superstring actions that exhibit $SL(2,Z)_T$ target space modular duality or $SL(2,Z)_S$ strong-weak coupling duality. The allowed…
We give a brief overview of the nature of spacetime emerging from string theory. This is radically different from the familiar spacetime of Einstein's relativity. At a perturbative level, the spacetime metric appears as ``coupling…
We review the basics of the dynamics of closed strings moving along the discretized line \Z. The string excitations are described by a field \phi_x(\tau) where x is the position of the string in the embedding space and \tau is a…
Recent developments in string theory suggest that string theory landscape of vacua is vast. It is natural to ask if this landscape is as vast as allowed by consistent-looking effective field theories. We use universality ideas from string…
We investigate (super) string theory on $AdS_3$ background based on an approach of free field realization. We demonstrate that this string theory can be reformulated as a string theory defined on a linear dilaton background along the…
The initial data of the gravitational field produced by a loop thick string is considered. We show that a thick loop is not a geodesic on the initial hypersurface, while a loop conical singularity is. This suggests that there is the ``{\it…
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 quantize in light cone gauge the bosonic sector of string theory on Anti-de Sitter space in the zero curvature radius limit. We find that the worldsheet falls apart into a theory of free partons and map the Hilbert space of the string…
Field theories based on non-commutative spacetimes exhibit very distinctive nonlocal effects which mix the ultraviolet with the infrared in bizarre ways. In particular if the time coordinate is involved in the non-commutativity the theory…
We discuss the problem of consistent description of higher spin massive fields coupled to external gravity. As an example we consider massive field of spin 2 in arbitrary gravitational field. Consistency requires the theory to have the same…
We investigate the validity of the equivalence principle near horizons in string theory, analyzing the breakdown of effective field theory caused by longitudinal string spreading effects. An experiment is set up where a detector is thrown…
As of today there exist consistent, gauge-invariant string field theories describing all string theories: bosonic open and closed strings, open superstrings, heterotic strings and type II strings. The construction of these theories require…
We propose a method for measuring the string tension in gauge theories, by considering an interference effect of mesons, which is governed by a space-time area law, due to confinement. Although it is only a gedanken experiment for real…