Conformal to Harmonic Gauge for Bosonic Strings

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to eliminate ghost number anomalies in bosonic string theory by connecting conformal gauge formulations to background covariant harmonic gauge using finite field dependent BRST transformations.

Contribution

It proposes a novel approach to remove ghost number anomalies in bosonic string theory through a specific gauge transformation technique.

Findings

Successfully connects conformal gauge to harmonic gauge avoiding anomalies

Demonstrates the use of finite field dependent BRST transformations in string theory

Provides a new framework for anomaly-free bosonic string quantization

Abstract

We consider Polyakov theory of Bosonic strings in conformal gauge which are used to study conformal anomaly. However it exhibits ghost number anomaly. We show how this anomaly can be avoided by connecting this theory to that of in background covariant harmonic gauge which is known to be free from conformal and ghost number current anomaly, by using suitably constructed finite field dependent BRST transformation.