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Count oscillator polarizations at fixed center-of-mass momentum. In a critical closed bosonic string, each chiral sector has 24 transverse oscillator species. A species at frequency $m$ can be occupied $0,1,2,\dots$ times, so its contribution is $(1-q^m{)}^{-1}$. The full chiral generating function is thereforeThe two sectors are independent, while closed-string level matching restricts their oscillator numbers to the same $N$. Thus the number of states at the closed-string mass level is $g_N=d_N^2$, not $d_{2N}$.

Put $q=e^{-\beta }$, with $\beta >0$. The Dedekind eta function obeysThe transformed argument $2\pi i/\beta$ has large imaginary part, so its product approaches one and $\eta (2\pi i/\beta )\sim e^{-{\pi }^2/(6\beta )}$. HenceThis establishes the singular exponential as well as its power prefactor. The corrections to the transformed eta product are exponentially small in $1/\beta$.

The Cauchy coefficient formula, followed by $q=e^{-\beta }$, gives a steepest-descent integral with leading formLet $n=N-1$. The saddle of $S(\beta )=n\beta +4{\pi }^2/\beta$ isAlong the vertical steepest-descent direction $\beta ={\beta }_{\ast }+it$, the quadratic part is $-S^{\prime \prime }({\beta }_{\ast })t^2/2$. Thus the saddle-point approximation gives the Gaussian prefactorThe point $q=1$ supplies the largest exponential contribution. At another fixed root of unity of order $k>1$, the corresponding modular singularity gives a smaller exponential $e^{4\pi \sqrt{n}/k}$, so it does not change this leading asymptotic. Squaring the chiral result gives the large-level degeneracy of a closed bosonic stringReplacing $N-1$ by $N$ gives the equivalent usual leading asymptotic. The power $-27/2$ matters: the two-sector degeneracy is not just an unspecified exponential.

Since $M=2\sqrt{(N-1)/{\alpha }^{\prime }}$, the exponential is $e^{{\beta }_{H}M}$ withHere Boltzmann's constant is one. Coarse-graining the levels into a density per unit rest mass introduces the Jacobian $dN/dM={\alpha }^{\prime }M/2$. ConsequentlyThis is distinct from the degeneracy per level, whose power in $M$ is $-27$. The internal-state contribution to a canonical partition function behaves at large mass asIt converges for $\beta >{\beta }_H$ and diverges for $\beta <{\beta }_H$. At $\beta ={\beta }_H$, this particular internal rest-mass integral converges because of the power $M^{-26}$; one should not discard the prefactor and claim divergence there without specifying the full thermodynamic ensemble. For example, including continuous momenta in 25 spatial dimensions multiplies the high-mass integrand by a factor proportional to $M^{25/2}$, still leaving convergence of this ideal one-string integral at the endpoint, although sufficiently high derivatives are singular. Multi-string effects, volume and interactions affect the detailed limiting thermodynamics.

The leading microcanonical entropy grows as $S(E)\sim {\beta }_{H}E$, with logarithmic corrections, so increasingly large energies are stored in increasingly excited, long strings rather than in an arbitrarily hot ordinary gas. The Hagedorn temperature is the boundary of canonical convergence from above in inverse temperature; extrapolating the free-string canonical description to $T>T_H$ fails. This counting does not settle the interacting phase above that scale. Also, the bosonic ground-state tachyon is a separate vacuum instability; the high-level asymptotic is meaningful as a formal spectrum calculation without asserting a stable bosonic thermal vacuum.

Euclidean finite temperature compactifies time to a circle of radius $R_{\beta }=\beta /(2\pi )$. The string oscillator ground states with zero momentum number and winding $w=\pm 1$ have the displayed mass from the bosonic string mass spectrum. They become massless at ${\beta }_H=4\pi \sqrt{{\alpha }^{\prime }}$ and tachyonic at higher temperature. This thermal winding mode diagnoses breakdown of the perturbative low-temperature string gas at the Hagedorn temperature. The endpoint and order of a transition require interactions and a suitable stable vacuum; the ordinary zero-winding bosonic tachyon is already unstable independently of this thermal threshold.