Hadronic Strings -- A Revisit in the Shade of Moonshine

TL;DR

This paper revisits the concept of hadronic strings in the context of moonshine phenomena, reflecting on historical efforts to model hadrons with string theory and analyzing its relevance and limitations in light of modern QCD insights.

Contribution

It provides a historical and theoretical review of hadronic string models, connecting them with moonshine concepts and modern QCD understanding.

Findings

String models are appropriate for certain hadronic phenomena.

Limitations of string models are discussed in the context of QCD.

Historical perspective on dual models and their evolution.

Abstract

When asked to write a contribution to the memorial volume for Peter Freund I went through my memory of the first time I met Peter. This was in 1971 when Dual Models were very popular and I had just joined in the efforts. For a number of years I worked on the problem of finding a realistic Dual Model/String Theory for hadrons, and here I will review those efforts as they happened, but also in the light of what we now know about hadrons from QCD. I will argue for when a string picture of hadrons is appropriate and discuss its limitations and the specific results you get from it.