Closed String Tachyons and Their Implications for Non-Supersymmetric Strings

Closed string tachyons have long been somewhat mysterious. We note that there is often a regime in the classical moduli space in which one can systematically compute the effective action for such fields. In this regime, the tachyon is light, and cannot be integrated out. Instead, one must consider the combined dynamics of gravitons, moduli, tachyons and other light fields. We compute the action and find that the quartic term for the tachyon is positive in the field definition where the tachyon has no derivative coupling to the radion. We study the evolution of isotropic, homogeneous configurations and find that typically the system is driven to regions where the calculation is no longer under control.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, references adde

Radion and moduli stabilization from induced brane actions in higher-dimensional brane worlds

We consider a 4+N-dimensional brane world with 2 co-dimension 1 branes in an empty bulk. The two branes have N-1 of their extra dimensions compactified on a sphere S^(N-1), whereas the ordinary 4 spacetime directions are Poincare invariant. An essential input are induced stress-energy tensors on the branes providing different tensions for the spherical and flat part of the branes. The junction conditions - notably through their extra dimensional components - fix both the distance between the branes as well as the size of the sphere. As a result, we demonstrate, that there are no scalar Kaluza-Klein states at all (massless or massive), that would correspond to a radion or a modulus field of S^(N-1). We also discuss the effect of induced Einstein terms on the branes and show that their coefficients are bounded from above, otherwise they lead to a graviton ghost.Comment: 23 pages, no figures, references added, typos correcte

Hagedorn Strings and Correspondence Principle in AdS(3)

Motivated by the possibility of formulating a strings/black hole correspondence in AdS space, we extract the Hagedorn behavior of thermal AdS_3 bosonic string from 1-loop partition function of SL(2,R) WZW model. We find that the Hagedorn temperature is monotonically increasing as the AdS radius shrinks, reaches a maximum of order of string scale set by the unitarity bound of the CFT for internal space. The resulting density of states near the Hagedorn temperature resembles the form as for strings in flat space and is dominated by the space-like long string configurations. We then argue a conjectured strings/black hole correspondence in AdS space by applying the Hagedorn thermodynamics. We find the size of the corresponding black hole is a function of the AdS radius. For large AdS radius a black hole far bigger than the string scale will form. On the contrary, when the AdS and string scales are comparable a string size black hole will form. We also examine strings on BTZ background obtained through SL(2,Z) transformation. We find a tachyonic divergence for a BTZ black hole of string scale size.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures;v2 references added & appear on JHE

Hagedorn divergences and tachyon potential

We consider the critical behavior for a string theory near the Hagedorn temperature. We use the factorization of the worldsheet to isolate the Hagedorn divergences at all genera. We show that the Hagedorn divergences can be resummed by introducing double scaling limits, which smooth the divergences. The double scaling limits also allow one to extract the effective potential for the thermal scalar. For a string theory in an asymptotic anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime, the AdS/CFT correspondence implies that the critical Hagedorn behavior and the relation with the effective potential should also arise from the boundary Yang-Mills theory. We show that this is indeed the case. In particular we find that the free energy of a Yang-Mills theory contains ``vortex'' contributions at finite temperature. Yang-Mills Feynman diagrams with vortices can be identified with contributions from boundaries of moduli space on the string theory side.Comment: 36 pages, 13 figures, uses harvma

Families of N=2 Strings

In a given 4d spacetime bakcground, one can often construct not one but a family of distinct N=2 string theories. This is due to the multiple ways N=2 superconformal algebra can be embedded in a given worldsheet theory. We formulate the principle of obtaining different physical theories by gauging different embeddings of the same symmetry algebra in the same ``pre-theory.'' We then apply it to N=2 strings and formulate the recipe for finding the associated parameter spaces of gauging. Flat and curved target spaces of both (4,0) and (2,2) signatures are considered. We broadly divide the gauging choices into two classes, denoted by alpha and beta, and show them to be related by T-duality. The distinction between them is formulated topologically and hinges on some unique properties of 4d manifolds. We determine what their parameter spaces of gauging are under certain simplicity ansatz for generic flat spaces (R^4 and its toroidal compactifications) as well as some curved spaces. We briefly discuss the spectra of D-branes for both alpha and beta families.Comment: 66+1 pages, 2 tables, latex 2e, hyperref. ver2: typos corrected, reference adde

Random walks and the Hagedorn transition

We study details of the approach to the Hagedorn temperature in string theory in various static spacetime backgrounds. We show that the partition function for a {\it single} string at finite temperature is the torus amplitude restricted to unit winding around Euclidean time. We use the worldsheet path integral to derive the statement that the the sum over random walks of the thermal scalar near the Hagedorn transition is precisely the image under a modular transformation of the sum over spatial configurations of a single highly excited string. We compute the radius of gyration of thermally excited strings in $AdS_D\times S^n$. We show that the winding mode indicates an instability despite the AdS curvature at large radius, and that the negative mass squared decreases with decreasing AdS radius, much like the type 0 tachyon. We add further arguments to statements by Barbon and Rabinovici, and by Adams {\it et. al.}, that the Euclidean AdS black hole can thought of as a condensate of the thermal scalar. We use this to provide circumstantial evidence that the condensation of the thermal scalar decouples closed string modes.Comment: 34 pages (7 of references), 5 figures. v2: Reference added, grant acknowledgement added, typos correcte

Electromagnetic Strings: Complementarity between Time and Temperature

We investigate some of the intricate features in a gravity decoupling limit of a open bosonic string theory, in a constant electromagnetic (EM-) field. We explain the subtle nature of space-time at short distances, due to its entanglement with the gauge field windings in the theory. Incorporating the mass-shell condition in the theory, we show that the time coordinate is small, of the order of EM-string scale, and the space coordinates are large. We perform a careful analysis in the critical regime to describe the decoupling of a series of gauge-string windings in successions, just below the Hagedorn temperature. We argue for the condensation of gauge-string at the Hagedorn temperature, which is followed by the decoupling of tachyonic particles. We demonstrate the phenomena by revoking the effective noncommutative dynamics for the D(3)-brane and obtain nonlinear corrections to U(1) gauge theory. We discuss the spontaneous breaking of noncommutative U(1) symmetry and show that the Hagedorn phase is described by the noninteracting gauge particles. The notion of time reappears in the phase at the expense of temperature. It suggests a complementarity between two distinct notions, time and temperature, at short distances.Comment: 32 pages, 2 figures, renamed title, added clarification on winding modes, corrected typos, added reference

Area spectrum and quasinormal modes of black holes

We demonstrate that an equidistant area spectrum for the link variables in loop quantum gravity can reproduce both the thermodynamics and the quasinormal mode properties of black holes.Comment: 11 pages, no figures; references adde

Off-Shell Interactions for Closed-String Tachyons

Off-shell interactions for localized closed-string tachyons in C/Z_N superstring backgrounds are analyzed and a conjecture for the effective height of the tachyon potential is elaborated. At large N, some of the relevant tachyons are nearly massless and their interactions can be deduced from the S-matrix. The cubic interactions between these tachyons and the massless fields are computed in a closed form using orbifold CFT techniques. The cubic interaction between nearly-massless tachyons with different charges is shown to vanish and thus condensation of one tachyon does not source the others. It is shown that to leading order in N, the quartic contact interaction vanishes and the massless exchanges completely account for the four point scattering amplitude. This indicates that it is necessary to go beyond quartic interactions or to include other fields to test the conjecture for the height of the tachyon potential.Comment: 37 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX, JHEP class. Typos corrected, references added, published versio

Thermodynamic behavior of IIA string theory on a pp-wave

We obtain the thermal one loop free energy and the Hagedorn temperature of IIA superstring theory on the pp-wave geometry which comes from the circle compactification of the maximally supersymmetric eleven dimensional one. We use both operator and path integral methods and find the complete agreement between them in the free energy expression. In particular, the free energy in the $\mu \to \infty$ limit is shown to be identical with that of IIB string theory on maximally supersymmetric pp-wave, which indicates the universal thermal behavior of strings in the large class of pp-wave backgrounds. We show that the zero point energy and the modular properties of the free energy are naturally incorporated into the path integral formalism.Comment: 25 pages, Latex, JHEP style, v4: revised for clarity without change in main contents, version to appear in JHE