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String theory
Fundamental objects
String Brane D-brane
Perturbative theory
Bosonic Superstring Type I Type II (IIA / IIB) Heterotic (SO(32) · E8×E8)
Non-perturbative results
S-duality T-duality U-duality M-theory AdS/CFT correspondence
Phenomenology
Phenomenology Cosmology Landscape
Mathematics
Mirror symmetry Monstrous moonshine
Related concepts Theory of everything Conformal field theory Quantum gravity Supersymmetry Supergravity Twistor string theory N = 4 supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory Kaluza–Klein theory Multiverse Holographic principle
Theorists Arkani-Hamed Banks Cheng Dijkgraaf Duff Esole Fischler Gates Gliozzi Green Greene Gross Gubser Harvey Hořava Kaku Klebanov Kontsevich Linde Maldacena Mandelstam Martinec Minwalla Moore Motl Nekrasov Neveu Olive Polchinski Polyakov Ramond Randall Rohm Scherk Schwarz Seiberg Sen Shenker Sơn Strominger Sundrum Susskind 't Hooft Townsend Vafa Veneziano E. Verlinde H. Verlinde Witten Yau Zaslow
History Glossary
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Bosonic string theory is the original version of string theory, developed in the late 1960s. It is so called because it only contains bosons in the spectrum.

In the 1980s, supersymmetry was discovered in the context of string theory, and a new version of string theory called superstring theory (supersymmetric string theory) became the real focus. Nevertheless, bosonic string theory remains a very useful model to understand many general features of perturbative string theory, and many theoretical difficulties of superstrings can actually already be found in the context of bosonic strings.

Problems

Although bosonic string theory has many attractive features, it falls short as a viable physical model in two significant areas.

First, it predicts only the existence of bosons whereas many physical particles are fermions.

Second, it predicts the existence of a mode of the string with imaginary mass, implying that the theory has an instability to a process known as "tachyon condensation".

In addition, bosonic string theory in a general spacetime dimension displays inconsistencies due to the conformal anomaly. But, as was first noticed by Claud Lovelace,^[1] in a spacetime of 26 dimensions (25 dimensions of space and one of time), the critical dimension for the theory, the anomaly cancels. This high dimensionality is not necessarily a problem for string theory, because it can be formulated in such a way that along the 22 excess dimensions spacetime is folded up to form a small torus or other compact manifold. This would leave only the familiar four dimensions of spacetime visible to low energy experiments. The existence of a critical dimension where the anomaly cancels is a general feature of all string theories.

Types of bosonic strings

There are four possible bosonic string theories, depending on whether open strings are allowed and whether strings have a specified orientation. Recall that a theory of open strings also must include closed strings; open strings can be thought as having their endpoints fixed on a D25-brane that fills all of spacetime. A specific orientation of the string means that only interaction corresponding to an orientable worldsheet are allowed (e.g., two strings can only merge with equal orientation). A sketch of the spectra of the four possible theories is as follows:

Bosonic string theory	Non-positive M2displaystyle M^2 states
Open and closed, oriented	tachyon, massless antisymmetric tensor, graviton, dilaton
Open and closed, unoriented	tachyon, graviton, dilaton
Closed, oriented	tachyon, U(1) vector boson, antisymmetric tensor, graviton, dilaton
Closed, unoriented	tachyon, graviton, dilaton

Note that all four theories have a negative energy tachyon (M2=−1α′displaystyle M^2=-frac 1alpha ') and a massless graviton.

The rest of this article applies to the closed, oriented theory, corresponding to borderless, orientable worldsheets.

Mathematics

Path integral perturbation theory

Bosonic string theory can be said^[2] to be defined by the path integral quantization of the Polyakov action:

I0[g,X]=T8π∫Md2ξggmn∂mxμ∂nxνGμν(x)displaystyle I_0[g,X]=frac T8pi int _Md^2xi sqrt gg^mnpartial _mx^mu partial _nx^nu G_mu nu (x)

xμ(ξ)displaystyle x^mu (xi ) is the field on the worldsheet describing the embedding of the string in 25+1 spacetime; in the Polyakov formulation, gdisplaystyle g is not to be understood as the induced metric from the embedding, but as an independent dynamical field. Gdisplaystyle G is the metric on the target spacetime, which is usually taken to be the Minkowski metric in the perturbative theory. Under a Wick rotation, this is brought to a Euclidean metric Gμν=δμνdisplaystyle G_mu nu =delta _mu nu . M is the worldsheet as a topological manifold parametrized by the ξdisplaystyle xi coordinates. Tdisplaystyle T is the string tension and related to the Regge slope as T=12πα′displaystyle T=frac 12pi alpha '.

I0displaystyle I_0 has diffeomorphism and Weyl invariance. Weyl symmetry is broken upon quantization (Conformal anomaly) and therefore this action has to be supplemented with a counterterm, along with a hypothetical purely topological term, proportional to the Euler characteristic:

I=I0+λχ(M)+μ02∫Md2ξgdisplaystyle I=I_0+lambda chi (M)+mu _0^2int _Md^2xi sqrt g

The explicit breaking of Weyl invariance by the counterterm can be cancelled away in the critical dimension 26.

Physical quantities are then constructed from the (Euclidean) partition function and N-point function:

Z=∑h=0∞∫DgmnDXμNexp⁡(−I[g,X])displaystyle Z=sum _h=0^infty int frac mathcal Dg_mnmathcal DX^mu mathcal Nexp(-I[g,X])

⟨Vi1(k1μ)⋯Vip(kpμ)⟩=∑h=0∞∫DgmnDXμNexp⁡(−I[g,X])Vi1(k1μ)⋯Vip(kpμ)displaystyle leftlangle V_i_1(k_1^mu )cdots V_i_p(k_p^mu )rightrangle =sum _h=0^infty int frac mathcal Dg_mnmathcal DX^mu mathcal Nexp(-I[g,X])V_i_1(k_1^mu )cdots V_i_p(k_p^mu )

The perturbative series is expressed as a sum over topologies, indexed by the genus.

The discrete sum is a sum over possible topologies, which for euclidean bosonic orientable closed strings are compact orientable Riemannian surfaces and are thus identified by a genus hdisplaystyle h. A normalization factor Ndisplaystyle mathcal N is introduced to compensate overcounting from symmetries. While the computation of the partition function corresponds to the cosmological constant, the N-point function, including pdisplaystyle p vertex operators, describes the scattering amplitude of strings.

The symmetry group of the action actually reduces drastically the integration space to a finite dimensional manifold. The gdisplaystyle g path-integral in the partition function is a priori a sum over possible Riemannian structures; however, quotienting with respect to Weyl transformations allows us to only consider conformal structures, that is, equivalence classes of metrics under the identifications of metrics related by

g′(ξ)=eσ(ξ)g(ξ)displaystyle g'(xi )=e^sigma (xi )g(xi )

Since the world-sheet is two dimensional, there is a 1-1 correspondence between conformal structures and complex structures. One still has to quotient away diffeomorphisms. This leaves us with an integration over the space of all possible complex structures modulo diffeomorphisms, which is simply the moduli space of the given topological surface, and is in fact a finite-dimensional complex manifold. The fundamental problem of perturbative bosonic strings therefore becomes the parametrization of Moduli space, which is non-trivial for genus h≥4displaystyle hgeq 4.

h = 0

At tree-level, corresponding to genus 0, the cosmological constant vanishes: Z0=0displaystyle Z_0=0.

The four-point function for the scattering of four tachyons is the Shapiro-Virasoro amplitude:

A4∝(2π)26δ26(k)Γ(−1−s/2)Γ(−1−t/2)Γ(−1−u/2)Γ(2+s/2)Γ(2+t/2)Γ(2+u/2)displaystyle A_4propto (2pi )^26delta ^26(k)frac Gamma (-1-s/2)Gamma (-1-t/2)Gamma (-1-u/2)Gamma (2+s/2)Gamma (2+t/2)Gamma (2+u/2)

Where kdisplaystyle k is the total momentum and sdisplaystyle s, tdisplaystyle t, udisplaystyle u are the Mandelstam variables.

h = 1

The shaded region is a possible fundamental domain for the modular group.

Genus 1 is the torus, and corresponds to the one-loop level. The partition function amounts to:

Z1=∫M1d2τ8π2τ221(4π2τ2)12|η(τ)|−48eta (tau )right

τdisplaystyle tau is a complex number with positive imaginary part τ2displaystyle tau _2; M1displaystyle mathcal M_1, holomorphic to the moduli space of the torus, is any fundamental domain for the modular group PSL(2,Z)displaystyle PSL(2,mathbb Z ) acting on the upper half-plane, for example 2>1,−12<τ1<12displaystyle left^2>1,-frac 12<tau _1<frac 12right. η(τ)displaystyle eta (tau ) is the Dedekind eta function. The integrand is of course invariant under the modular group: the measure d2ττ22displaystyle frac d^2tau tau _2^2 is simply the Poincaré metric which has PSL(2,R) as isometry group; the rest of the integrand is also invariant by virtue of τ2→|cτ+d|2τ2displaystyle tau _2rightarrow and the fact that η(τ)displaystyle eta (tau ) is a modular form of weight 1/2.

This integral diverges. This is due to the presence of the tachyon and is related to the instability of the perturbative vacuum.

See also

• Nambu–Goto action


• Polyakov action

Notes

References

D'Hoker, Eric & Phong, D. H. (Oct 1988). "The geometry of string perturbation theory,". Rev. Mod. Phys. American Physical Society. 60 (4): 917–1065. Bibcode:1988RvMP...60..917D. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.60.917.

Belavin, A.A. & Knizhnik, V.G. (Feb 1986). "Complex geometry and the theory of quantum strings,". ZhETF. 91 (2): 364–390. Bibcode:1986ZhETF..91..364B.

External links

• How many string theories are there?


• PIRSA:C09001 - Introduction to the Bosonic String