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8.821 String Theory

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8.821 Lecture 01: What you need to know about string theory
Lecturer: McGreevy Scribe: McGreevy

Since I learned that we would get to have this class, Ive been torn between a) starting over with string perturbation theory and b) continuing where we left o. Option a) is favored by some people who didnt take last years class, and by me when Im feeling like I should do more research. But because of a sneaky and perhaps surprising fact of nature and the history of science there is a way to do option b) which doesnt leave out the people who missed last years class (and is only not in the interest of the lazy version of me). The fact is this. It is actually rare that the structure of worldsheet perturbation theory is directly used in research in the subject that is called string theory. And further, one of the most important developments in this subject, which is usually called, synecdochically, the AdS/CFT correspondence, can be discussed without actually using this machinery. The most well-developed results involve only classical gravity and quantum eld theory. So heres my crazy plan: we will study the AdS/CFT correspondence and its applications and generalizations, without relying on string perturbation theory. Why should we do this? You may have heard that string theory promises to put an end once and for all to that pesky business of physical science. Maybe something like it unies particle physics and gravity and cooks your breakfast. Frankly, in this capacity, it is at best an idea machine at the moment. But this AdS/CFT correspondence, whereby the string theory under discussion lives not in the space in which our quantum elds are local, but in an auxiliary curved extra-dimensional space (like a souped-up fourier transform space), is where string theory comes the closest to physics. The reason: it oers otherwise-unavailable insight into strongly-coupled eld theories (examples of which: QCD in the infrared, high-temperature superconductors, cold atoms at unitarity), and into quantum gravity (questions about which include the black-hole information paradox and the resolution of singularities), and because through this correspondence, gauge theories provide a better description of string theory than the perturbative one. The role of string theory in our discussion will be like its role in the lives of practitioners of the subject: a source of power, a source of inspiration, a source of mystery and a source of vexation. The choice of subjects is motivated mainly by what I want to learn better. After describing how to do calculations using the correspondence, we will focus on physics at nite temperature. For what I think will happen after that, see the syllabus on the course webpage. Suggestions in the spirit described above are very welcome. 1

ADMINISTRIVIA please look at course homepage for announcements, syllabus, reading assignments please register I promise to try to go more slowly than last year. coursework: 1. psets. less work than last year. hand them in at lecture or at my oce.
pset 0 posted, due tomorrow (survey).
2. scribe notes. theres no textbook. this is a brilliant idea from quantum computing. method of
assigning scribe TBD. as you can see, I am writing the scribe notes for the rst lecture.
3. end of term project: a brief presentation (or short paper) summarizing a topic of interest. a list
of candidate topics will be posted.
goal: give some context, say what the crucial point is, say what the implications are.
try to save the rest of us from having to read the paper.
(benets: you will learn this subject much better, you will have a chance to practice giving a talk
in a friendly environment)
Next time, we will start from scratch, and motivate the shocking statement of AdS/CFT duality without reference to string theory. It will be useful, however, for you to have some big picture of the epistemological status of string theory. Todays lecture will contain an unusually high density of statements that I will not explain. I explained many of them last fall; experts please be patient. What you need to know about string theory for this class: 1) Its a quantum theory which at low energy and low curvature 1 reduces to general relativity coupled to some other elds plus calculable higher-derivative corrections. 2) It contains D-branes. These have Yang-Mills theories living on them. We will now discuss these statements in just a little more detail.

0.1

how to do string theory (textbook fantasy cartoon version)

Pick a background spacetime M, endowed with a metric which in some local coords looks like ds2 = g (x)dx dx ; there are some other elds to specify, too, but lets ignore them for now.
1

compared to the string scale Ms , which well introduce below

Consider the set of maps X : worldsheet target spacetime (, ) X (, ) where , are local coordinates on the worldsheet. Now try to compute the following kind of path integral I [DX(, )] exp (iSws [X..]). This is meant to be a proxy for a physical quantity like a scattering amplitude for two strings to go to two strings; the data about the external states are hidden in the measure, hence the . The subscript ws stands for worldsheet; more on the action below. An analog to keep rmly in mind is the rst quantized description of quantum eld theory. The Feynman-Kac formula says that a transition amplitude takes the form x(2 )=x2 eiSwl [x( )] = x2 , 2 |x1 , 1 (1)
x(1 )=x1

Here x : worldline target spacetime ( ) x ( ). can be written as a sum over trajectories interpolating between specied inital and nal states. Here x( ) is a map from the world line of the particle into the target space, which has some coordinates x . For example, for a massless charged scalar particle, propagating in a background spacetime with metric g and background (abelian) gauge eld A , the worldline action takes the form Swl [x] = d g (x)x x + d x A where x x. Note that the minimal coupling to the gauge eld can be written as A d x A =
wl

where the second expression is meant to indicate an integral of the one-form A over the image of the worldline in the target space (The expression on the LHS is often called the pullback to the worldline. Those are words.). A few comments about this worldline integral. 1) The spacetime gauge symmetry A A + d requires the worldline not to end, except at a place where weve explicitly stuck some non-gauge-invariant source (x1 , x2 in the expression above). 2) The path integral in (1) is that of a one-dimensional QFT with scalar elds x ( ), and coupling constants determined by g , A . To understand this last statement, Taylor expand around some point in the target space, which lets call 0. Then for example A (x) = A (0) + x A (0) + ... and the coupling to the gauge eld becomes d (x A (0) + x x A (0) + ...) 3

so the Taylor coecients are literally coupling constants, and an innite number of them are encoded in the background elds g, A. After all this discussion of the worldline analog, and before we explain more about the , why might it be good to make this replacement of worldlines with worldsheets? Good Thing number 1: many particles from vibrational modes. From far away, meaning when probed at energies E Ms , they look like particles. This suggests that there might be some kind of unication, where all the particles (dierent spin, dierent quantum numbers) might be made up of one kind of string. To see other potential Good Things about this replacement of particles with strings, lets consider how interactions are included. In eld theory, we can include interactions by specifying initial and nal particle states (say, localized wavepackets), and summing over all ways of connecting them, e.g. by position-space feynman diagrams. To do this, we need to include all possible interaction vertices, and integrate over the spacetime points where the interactions occur. UV divergences arise when these points collide. To do the same thing in string theory, we see that we can now draw smooth diagrams with no special points (see gure). For closed strings, this is just the sewing together of pants. A similar procedure can be done for open strings (though in fact we must also attach handles there). So, Good Thing Number Two is the fact that one string diagram corresponds to many feynman diagrams. Next lets ask Q: where is the interaction point? A: nowhere. Its in dierent places in dierent Lorentz frames. This is a rst (correct) indication that strings will have soft UV behavior (Good Thing Number Three). They are oppy at high energies. The crucial point: near any point in the worldsheet (contributing to some amplitude), it is just free propagation. This implies a certain uniqueness (Good Thing Number Four): once the free theory is specied, the interactions are determined. The structure of string perturbation theory is very rigid; it is very dicult to mess with it (e.g. by including nonlocal interactions) without destroying it. 2

BUT: Only for some choices of (M, ) can we even dene I. To see why, lets consider the simplest example where M = IRD1,1 with g = diag(1, 1, 1, 1...1). Then the worldsheet action is 1 d2 X X . (2) Sws [X] = 4 Here = 1, 2 is a worldsheet index and = 0...D 1 indexes the spacetime coords.
1 The quantity 4 has dimensions of length2 . It is the tension of the string, because it suppresses congurations with large gradients of X ; when it is large, the string is sti. This is the mass scale
2 Why stop at one-dimensional objects? Why not move up to membranes? Its still true that the interaction points get smoothed out. But the divergences on the worldvolume are worse. d = 2 is a sort of compromise. In fact, some sense can be made of the case of 3-dimensional base space, using the BFSS matrix theory. They turn out to be already 2d quantized! The spectrum is a continuum, corresponding to the degree of freedom of bubbling o parts of the worldvolume. Its not entirely clear to me what to make of this.

Crudely rendered perturbative interactions of closed strings. Time goes upwards. Slicing this picture by horizontal planes shows that these are diagrams which contribute to the path integral for 2 to 2 scattering. Tilting the horizontal plane corresponds to boosting your frame of reference and moves the point where you think the splitting and joining happened.

alluded to twice so far:

1 ; 4 people will disagree about the factors of 2 and here.

where . This is solved by superpositions of right-movers and left-movers:

(2) is the action for free bosons. We can compute anything we want about them. The equations of motion 0 = Sws give the massless 2d wave equation: X 2 2 0 = + X = + X

To study closed strings, we can treat the spatial direction of the worldsheet as a circle + 2, in which case we can expand in modes: + X (, ) = ein + ein . n n
nZ Z nZ Z

For open strings, the boundary conditions will relate the right-moving and left-moving modes: . We can quantize this canonically, and nd [ , ] = nn+m , n m [ , ] = nn+m , [, = 0. n m ]

This says that we can think of n<0 as creation operators and n>0 as annihilation operators. Let |0 be annihilated by all the n>0 . The zeromodes 0 , 0 are related to the center-of-mass position of the string. The worldsheet hamiltonian is and momentum p Hws = p2 + n n a,
n>0

where a is a normal-ordering constant, which turns out to be 1. 5

Here comes the problem: consider the state |BAD =0 |0 for n > 0. Because of the commutator n [0 , 0 ] = n, we face the choice n n |BAD
2

<0

or

EBAD < 0.

Neither is OK, especially since EBAD becomes arbitrarily negative as n gets larger. This kind of problem is familiar from QED or Yang-Mills theory, where the time component of the gauge eld presents with very similar symptoms. We need to gauge some symmetry of the theory to decouple the negative-norm states. One way to do this is to gauge the 2d conformal group. Were going to talk a lot more about conformal symmetry soon, so Ill postpone even the denition. There are fancy motivations for this involving 2d gravity on the worldsheet that we are not going to talk about now. Of course, like any gauge symmetry, this symmetry is a fake, and one could imagine formulations of the theory wherein it is never introduced. One necessary condition arising from this is that the worldsheet QFT needs to be a conformal eld theory (CFT). This is not the CFT of the AdS/CFT correspondence. The generators of the conformal group include, in particular, the hamiltonian, so we must impose 0 = Hws |phys as a constraint, like Gauss law in QED. Acting on a state with N oscillator excitations, this equation takes the form 0 = p2 + N 1 p2 + m2 , which looks like an on-shell condition for a particle in minkowski space. This tells us the targetspace mass of a string state in terms of its worldsheet data. Now we can build physical states3 . The result looks like STRING STATE 1 1 |0 1 |0 1
{ [ } ]

FIELD sym tensor g AS tensor B scalar T1 ...n ... scalar T

MASS2
2 m2 = Ms

|0

m2 = 0 m2 = 0

1 1 |0

m2 = 0
2 m2 = nMs

11 ...n1 n |0 1 n

...

...

(where [..] is meant to indicate antisymmetrization of indices, {..} is meant to indicate symmetriza tion of indices). The scalar is called the dilaton. For open strings, we would have, among other states, STRING STATE |0 1 FIELD MASS2

vector A m2 = 0

3 Theres one important constraint I didnt mention, called level-matching, which says that the number of right moving excitations N and the number of left-moving excitations N should be equal. This follows from demanding that there be no special point on the worldsheet.

The worldsheet gauge symmetry leads directly to the spacetime gauge symmetries under which e.g.
A A + d(0) and the two-form B B dx dx B + d(1) . Theres a general theorem that a massless symmetric tensor like g which interacts must couple to stress energy, and hence is a graviton. Using the machinery built from the above picture, this mode can be seen to participate in nontrivial scattering amplitudes, which indeed reduce to those computed from GR at low energies. So string theory, however unwieldy this description, is a quantum theory of gravity.

0.2

the spacetime eective action

Almost every string theory result goes through the spacetime eective action: Sst [g, B, ...] dD x ge2 R(D) + ()2 + H 2 + ... where H dB i.e.H [ B] , R(D) is the Ricci scalar made from g , and more about the dots below. This action is correct in two a priori dierent ways. 1) It reproduces scattering amplitudes of the uctuations g , B , ... computed by the world sheet path integral, at leading order in E 2 , where E is say the biggest energy of a state involved in the scattering event. That is to say, that the eective action is the leading term in a deriva tive expansion, where the higher-dimension operators are suppressed by the appropriate number of powers of ; the coecients of the corrections are denite and computable. 2) To see the second way of thinking about Sst , consider a string propagating in a background of g , B ... Its action is 1 d2 g g (X) X X + B (X) X X + (X)R(2) + ... (3) Sws[X] = 4 Here, is an auxiliary metric on the worldsheet that we can introduce for convenience using the gauge symmetry. This is a 2d QFT with elds X . The bosons X are free is the spacetime is at, and the other elds are trivial. Otherwise, they interact, and the coupling constants are determined by the background elds, like on the worldline above. If the target space is nearly at, we can treat these interactions perturbatively. The eective , i.e. strength of interaction, is determined by R(D) . In general, these coupling constants will run with scale. A necessary condition for this QFT to be a CFT is that the beta functions for all the coupling constants vanish. It turns out that the leading-order beta functions for g , B , are exactly the equations of motion arising from varying the spacetime eective action Sst !

We can learn some more simple lessons from the worldsheet action (3).
1) The worldsheet metric is innocuous4 . If you tried to take it seriously and give it some dynamics,
you would try to add the Einstein-Hilbert term,
(2) R . Sws = But this term, which is already present, with coecient determined by the spacetime zeromode 0 of the dilaton eld , is topological it is the Euler characteristic of the worldsheet. On a worldsheet with h handles (genus h) and b boundaries, it evaluates to (2) R = () = 2 2h b. Letting gs ln 0 , this means that the contribution to the sum over worldsheets of worldsheets with h splittings and joinings is proportional to
2h2 gs .

Thus gs is the quantity which determines how much strings want to interact, the string coupling. It is the in spacetime. This means that the eective action above is also the leading term in an expansion in powers of gs . What I wrote above is the tree-level eective action. A more correct expression is 2 Sst [g, B, ...] dD x ge2 R(D) + ()2 + H 2 + ... 1 + O( ) 1 + O(gs ) 2) Recall that on the worldline with coupling d A x = A, gauge invariance under A A + d(0) implied that the worldline was not allowed to end randomly, and that the worldline was a monopole source for the gauge eld A. The coupling of the string to the AS tensor can similarly be written as a minimal coupling: dd X X B = B.
X()

The gauge invariance ((1) is an arbitrary, well-behaved one-form in the target space) implies that the worldsheet cannot end just anywhere. More on this soon. It also means that fundamental strings are charged under the AS tensor, which is usually called the NSNS B-eld, or Kalb-Ramond eld. [To be continued] B B + d(1)

modulo the issue of the conformal anomaly