TY - JOUR
T1 - Open strings on the Rindler horizon
AU - Witten, Edward
N1 - Funding Information:
I thank V. Rosenhaus, P. Sarnak, and especially A. Dabholkar for discussions concerning this topic. Research partially supported by NSF Grant PHY-1606531.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s).
PY - 2019/1/1
Y1 - 2019/1/1
N2 - It has been proposed that a certain ℤN orbifold, analytically continued in N, can be used to describe the thermodynamics of Rindler space in string theory. In this paper, we attempt to implement this idea for the open-string sector. The most interesting result is that, although the orbifold is tachyonic for positive integer N, the tachyon seems to disappear after analytic continuation to the region that is appropriate for computing Tr ρN, where ρ is the density matrix of Rindler space and Re N> 1. Analytic continuation of the full orbifold conformal field theory remains a challenge, but we find some evidence that if such analytic continuation is possible, the resulting theory is a logarithmic conformal field theory, necessarily nonunitary.
AB - It has been proposed that a certain ℤN orbifold, analytically continued in N, can be used to describe the thermodynamics of Rindler space in string theory. In this paper, we attempt to implement this idea for the open-string sector. The most interesting result is that, although the orbifold is tachyonic for positive integer N, the tachyon seems to disappear after analytic continuation to the region that is appropriate for computing Tr ρN, where ρ is the density matrix of Rindler space and Re N> 1. Analytic continuation of the full orbifold conformal field theory remains a challenge, but we find some evidence that if such analytic continuation is possible, the resulting theory is a logarithmic conformal field theory, necessarily nonunitary.
KW - Black Holes in String Theory
KW - Superstrings and Heterotic Strings
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U2 - 10.1007/JHEP01(2019)126
DO - 10.1007/JHEP01(2019)126
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85060765223
SN - 1126-6708
VL - 2019
JO - Journal of High Energy Physics
JF - Journal of High Energy Physics
IS - 1
M1 - 126
ER -