English

The effective theory of strings

Mathematical Physics 2014-04-16 v5 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory math.MP

Abstract

We show that the Nambu-Goto string, and its higher dimensional generalizations, can be quantized, in the sense of an effective theory, in any dimension of the target space. The crucial point is to consider expansions around classical string configurations. We are using tools from perturbative algebraic quantum field theory, quantum field theory on curved spacetimes, and the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism. Our model has some similarities with the L\"uscher-Weisz string, but we allow for arbitrary classical background string configurations and keep the diffeomorphism invariance.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1204.6263,
  title  = {The effective theory of strings},
  author = {Dorothea Bahns and Katarzyna Rejzner and Jochen Zahn},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1204.6263},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

45 pages, v2/3: Section 6.5 clarified, minor changes in Sections 1 and 6.4, typos corrected, v4: Section 7 rewritten, v5: final

R2 v1 2026-06-21T20:55:49.640Z