Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 306 2 a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
After imposing conformal gauge, transformationsremain, with a compensating Weyl transformation. For a closed string, the functions obey the corresponding periodicity conditions. Introduce target-space light-cone coordinates . When , the equations make a sum of left- and right-moving functions, and the two residual reparameterizations can setThis light-cone gauge in string theory removes all nonzero oscillators of . Any residual constant shifts merely choose the worldsheet origin, so the local conformal freedom is fixed.