TY - JOUR
T1 - Continuum strings from discrete field theories
AU - Klebanov, Igor
AU - Susskind, Leonard
N1 - Funding Information:
Many systems in statistical mechanics and field theory exhibit string-like excitations. Superconducting fluxoids, domain boundaries in 2 + 1 dimensional magnets, Nielsen-Olesen vortices and electric flux tubes in QCD are a few examples. In many respects these objects are similar to the idealized objects of string theory which have attracted a lot of interest recently. There are, however, very significant differences. In particular, the existence of massless gauge bosons and gravitons does not occur in these other systems. This raises the following interesting question: can ideal string behaviour occur in a more or less conventional field theoretic or statistical mechanical system? A related question is whether string theory can be simulated on a computer which stores information in terms of local degrees of freedom and evolves it according to near-neighbor interactions on a discrete lattice, as in lattice gauge theory. The purpose of this paper is to show that the answer is positive. The basic premise is that for such a system to work it must have an instability which would ordinarily exclude it as a sensible theory. Indeed, almost everything one might think of calculating diverges except for the spectrum and the S-matrix. The nature of this instability is best understood by considering what the typical string or world sheet looks like in space-time. We will begin by considering the wave function of a string in the light-cone frame. The points of a closed string Work supported by the Department of Energy, contract DE-AC03-76SF00515. 2 Work supported by NSF PHY 812280.
PY - 1988/10/31
Y1 - 1988/10/31
N2 - We demonstrate that one of the phases of a light-cone lattice gauge theory with an infinite number of colors exactly describes free fundamental strings. The lattice spacing does not have to be taken to zero. Thus, exact rotation and translation invariance can coexist with discrete space.
AB - We demonstrate that one of the phases of a light-cone lattice gauge theory with an infinite number of colors exactly describes free fundamental strings. The lattice spacing does not have to be taken to zero. Thus, exact rotation and translation invariance can coexist with discrete space.
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U2 - 10.1016/0550-3213(88)90237-4
DO - 10.1016/0550-3213(88)90237-4
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0001437407
SN - 0550-3213
VL - 309
SP - 175
EP - 187
JO - Nuclear Physics, Section B
JF - Nuclear Physics, Section B
IS - 1
ER -