A tale of three — tensionless strings and vacuum structure

• Main Authors: Arjun Bagchi, Aritra Banerjee, Shankhadeep Chakrabortty, Sudipta Dutta, Pulastya Parekh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2020-04-01
• Series: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Subjects: Bosonic Strings; Conformal and W Symmetry; Higher Spin Symmetry
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP04(2020)061

Abstract Within the premise of canonical quantisation, we re-examine the quantum structure of bosonic tensionless string theory. In the classical theory, the worldsheet metric degenerates and the Bondi-Metnzer-Sachs (BMS) algebra arises as the residual symmetries on fixing the tensionless equivalent of the conformal gauge. In the quantum regime, we find, on careful examination, that there are multiple ways to impose constraints to restrict the physical Hilbert space, which in turn lead to three distinct choices of tensionless vacua. We analyse these vacua in detail, commenting on various aspects like the central charges and the spectrum around each of them.