Phys. Rev. D 37, 974 - 980 (1988)

Closed smooth strings on a torus

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K. S. Viswanathan and Zhou Xiaoan
Department of Physics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6

Received 28 July 1987

The free energy of a gas of closed strings with extrinsic curvature (smooth strings) is evaluated on a torus. This is compared with the free energy of a collection of free particles, and hence the mass spectrum of excitations of the smooth strings is deduced. It is found that above a critical value of the coupling constant of the curvature term the spectrum is free of tachyons. Furthermore, there are no massless spin-2 excitations. The absence of massless spin-2 fields is a consequence of the fact that the smooth-string theory is not modular invariant.


©1988 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v37/p974
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.37.974
PACS: 11.17.+y

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