Intersection of world-lines on curved surfaces and path-ordering of the Wilson loop

TL;DR

This paper explores how world-lines intersect on curved surfaces and extends the concept of path-ordering in Wilson loops to surfaces, with implications for string theory and supersymmetry.

Contribution

It introduces a method to generalize path-ordering of Wilson loops from curves to surfaces, including a supersymmetric extension, enhancing the understanding of string contact interactions.

Findings

Derived average intersection counts for world-lines on curved surfaces.

Extended path-ordering concept from curves to surfaces.

Proposed a supersymmetric generalization of the model.

Abstract

We study contact interactions for long world-lines on a curved surface, focusing on the average number of times two world-lines intersect as a function of their end-points. The result can be used to extend the concept of path-ordering, as employed in the Wilson loop, from a closed curve into the interior of a surface spanning the curve. Taking this surface as a string world-sheet yields a generalisation of the string contact interaction previously used to represent the Abelian Wilson loop as a tensionless string. We also describe a supersymmetric generalisation.