Timelike boundary Liouville theory

By M. Gutperle, Andrew Strominger. 2003

173 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The timelike boundary Liouville (TBL) conformal field theory consisting of a negative norm boson with an exponential boundary interaction is considered. TBL and its close cousin, a positive norm boson with a non-hermitian boundary interaction, arise in the description of the $c=1$ accumulation point of $c<1$ minimal models, as the worldsheet description of open string tachyon condensation in string theory and in scaling limits of superconductors with line defects. Bulk correlators are shown to be exactly soluble. In contrast, due to OPE singularities near the boundary interaction, the computation of boundary correlators is a challenging problem which we address but do not fully solve. Analytic continuation from the known correlators of spatial boundary Liouville to TBL encounters an infinite accumulation of poles and zeros. A particular contour prescription is proposed which cancels the poles against the zeros in the boundary correlator $d(\o) $ of two operators of weight $\o^2$ and yields a finite result. A general relation is proposed between two-point CFT correlators and stringy Bogolubov coefficients, according to which the magnitude of $d(\o)$ determines the rate of open string pair creation during tachyon condensation. The rate so obtained agrees at large $\o$ with a minisuperspace analysis of previous work. It is suggested that the mathematical ambiguity arising in the prescription for analytic continuation of the correlators corresponds to the physical ambiguity in the choice of open string modes and vacua in a time dependent background.

Subfields: Condensed Matter Physics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b2130f454f4bdf2c697beeb9e805f0931b9fd7d1

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Citations in the corpus

The tachyon at the end of the universe (2005, background): “As explained for example in [38], the two-point function of two negative frequency modes in the bulk is”
A matrix model dual of type 0B string theory in two dimensions (2003, unknown): “1E-mail: takayana@wigner.harvard.edu 2E-mail: nick@legendre.harvard.edu”
Tachyon effective actins in open string theory (2003, background): “(2.7) 5 This case was studied in [ 29 ]. 6 For now we restrict to amplitudes involving only tachyons.”
Closed strings from decaying D-branes (2003, methodology): “It is of great interest to understand the “real time” behavior of this process [2-21].”
Strings from Tachyons (2003, background): “We explain the origin of the double-scaling limit, and interpret it as an extreme representative of a large equivalence class of dual theories.”
Liouville Field Theory — A decade after the revolution (2004, methodology): “where we have introduced the standard Bogoliubov coefficient notation [185]: ψout p = αpψ in p +βpψ in∗ −p , ψin p = α ∗ pψ out p − βpψout∗ −p .”
D-brane Decay in Two-Dimensional String Theory (2003, background): “A more detailed study of Dp-brane decay was carried out in [6-24] and led to many new insights.”