The effective theory of strings

Dorothea Bahns, Katarzyna Rejzner, Jochen Zahn
April 27, 2012
We show that the Nambu-Goto string, and its higher dimensional generalizations, can be quantized, in the sense of an effective theory, in any dimension of the target space. The crucial point is to consider expansions around classical string configurations. We are using tools from perturbative algebraic quantum field theory, quantum field theory on curved spacetimes, and the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism. Our model has some similarities with the Lüscher-Weisz string, but we allow for arbitrary classical background string configurations and keep the diffeomorphism invariance.

Keywords: 
perturbative AQFT, Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism, QFT on curved spacetimes, string theory