Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2005 / iii / Paper 54 / 4

Use the critical ten-dimensional RNS string and light-cone gauge in string theory, leaving eight transverse bosons and eight transverse fermions. The bosonic oscillators ${\alpha }_{-m}^i$ have integer $m>0$. In the Neveu–Schwarz sector the fermionic oscillators $b_{-r}^i$ have positive half-integer $r$, while in the Ramond sector the fermionic oscillators $d_{-m}^i$ have integer $m$, including zero modes. Their anticommutators are $\{b_r^i,b_s^j\}={\delta }^{ij}{\delta }_{r+s,0}$ and $\{d_m^i,d_n^j\}={\delta }^{ij}{\delta }_{m+n,0}$. The level and mass formulas areBefore projection the NS ground state is a tachyon of mass squared $-1/(2{\alpha }^{\prime })$. Its oscillator tower describes spacetime bosons. The Ramond zero-mode Clifford algebra $\{\sqrt{2}{d}_0^i,\sqrt{2}{d}_0^j\}=2{\delta }^{ij}$ makes the Ramond vacuum a 16-dimensional spinor of $SO(8)$, split into the two chiral eight-dimensional spinors. The Ramond tower describes spacetime fermions; there is no Ramond tachyon.

Choose the supersymmetric GSO projection. In the NS sector it keeps states with an odd number of fermionic creation operators, eliminating the zero-oscillator tachyon. In the Ramond sector it fixes the combined parity of the zero-mode chirality and the nonzero-mode fermion number. Thus the Ramond vacuum retains one chirality; adding an odd number of nonzero-mode fermions requires the opposite zero-mode chirality. The projected towers both have ${\alpha }^{\prime }{M}^2=0,1,2,\dots$. Here the counts refer to oscillator polarizations for a single endpoint multiplicity; any common Chan-Paton multiplicity multiplies both counts.

At the first retained mass level, $M^2=0$, the NS states are $b_{-1/2}^i|0;k⟩$ for $i=1,\dots ,8$, furnishing the eight polarizations of the ten-dimensional gauge vector. The Ramond ground state is one chiral spinor with eight physical polarizations. HenceThese form the massless supersymmetric vector multiplet.

At the next mass level, ${\alpha }^{\prime }{M}^2=1$, the NS level is $3/2$. The odd-fermion condition leaves exactlyTheir counts are $8$, $8\cdot 8=64$ and $\left(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{8}{3}\right)=56$. Anticommutation requires distinct indices in the third family. There are no other partitions of $3/2$ with odd fermion number, so these are all 128 bosons. They assemble into the massive little-group $SO(9)$ representations of dimensions 44 and 84: a traceless symmetric two-tensor and a three-form.

At Ramond level one, the only possibilities are ${\alpha }_{-1}^i|s⟩$ and $d_{-1}^i|s^{\prime }⟩$. The spinors $|s⟩$ and $|s^{\prime }⟩$ each have eight components and have opposite zero-mode chirality because the fermionic oscillator reverses the GSO parity. Consequently there are $64+64=128$ fermions. They form a gamma-traceless vector-spinor of the massive little group: a vector-spinor has $9\cdot 16$ components and its gamma trace removes 16. Therefore the first massive level of the open RNS string hasThis is the open-string mass normalization; the same chiral oscillator count used in a closed string would correspond to ${\alpha }^{\prime }{M}^2=4$.

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.

The starting point is a physical massless closed-string stateIts symmetric traceless part is a spacetime spin-two field, the graviton; the antisymmetric part is the Kalb–Ramond field, and the scalar field part gives the dilaton. The physical-state conditions impose transverse polarizations, and longitudinal null states identifyfor the symmetric component. In position space this is the linearized diffeomorphism $\delta h_{\mu \nu }={\partial }_{\mu }{\xi }_{\nu }+{\partial }_{\nu }{\xi }_{\mu }$. Thus the massless spin-two state has the gauge redundancy required of a gravitational field, rather than an arbitrary massive tensor interaction.

Closed-string amplitudes factorize on this graviton pole. Its leading soft coupling is universal and couples to the energy-momentum tensor of the other string states. Decoupling longitudinal polarizations enforces the gravitational Ward identities. The two-derivative cubic graviton vertex extracted from the low-momentum three-point amplitude is the cubic vertex of the Einstein-Hilbert action; continuing these Ward identities requires the nonlinear diffeomorphism-invariant completion. A complementary way to derive the same dynamics is to demand quantum consistency of propagation in a curved background.

Replace the flat target metric in the worldsheet action by $G_{\mu \nu }(X)$, and allow the two-form and dilaton backgrounds. After Euclidean continuation, their couplings have the schematic normalizationThese backgrounds are couplings of a string nonlinear sigma model. Quantum Weyl invariance requires their Weyl anomaly coefficients to vanish. To first order in ${\alpha }^{\prime }$, the metric equation isThe dilaton and two-form equations accompany it. In a critical-dimensional background with $H=0$ and constant $\Phi$, the leading metric equation is $R_{\mu \nu }=0$, precisely the vacuum Einstein field equations. Matter and other massless string fields supply the corresponding stress-energy when retained. This argument also explains why arbitrary curved target metrics are not consistent string backgrounds.

The equations arise from the leading string-frame massless effective actionA constant-dilaton expansion of its curvature term directly gives the Einstein-Hilbert kinetic and self-interaction terms. For a varying dilaton, introduce the Einstein-frame metric $G_{\mu \nu }^E=e^{-4\Phi /(D-2)}{G}_{\mu \nu }$. The Weyl rescaling of the metric and the corresponding transformation of the Ricci scalar and an integration by parts giveThis displays ordinary Einstein gravity coupled to the dilaton and two-form. Gravity need not be the only low-energy field: those fields, compactification moduli and gauge fields have to be retained or stabilized as appropriate. Four-dimensional gravity additionally requires compactification from the critical target dimension, with its Newton constant depending on the compactification volume.

The approximation is controlled when external energies obey $E\sqrt{{\alpha }^{\prime }}\ll 1$ and curvatures obey ${\alpha }^{\prime }|R_{\mu \nu \rho \sigma }|\ll 1$. Massive string modes then produce suppressed higher-derivative interactions, such as higher-curvature corrections. Small string coupling $g_s=e^{{\Phi }_0}$ also suppresses higher-genus quantum corrections; dimensionally $G_D$ scales as $g_s^2{\alpha }^{\prime (D-2)/2}$. Thus Einstein gravity is the universal leading two-derivative dynamics of the massless closed-string spin-two field, with additional massless matter, string-length corrections and quantum corrections systematically controlled.

For the bosonic theory this is the massless-sector effective description in 26 dimensions; the tachyon means that it is not by itself a proof of a stable vacuum. Tachyon-free supersymmetric string theories have the same massless graviton mechanism in ten dimensions before compactification. Removing the tachyon and obtaining a realistic four-dimensional model require extra physical input beyond the emergence of the Einstein action.