A Tale of Three. Tensionless strings and vacuum structure

TL;DR

This paper investigates the quantum structure of bosonic tensionless string theory, revealing multiple vacua and analyzing their properties within a canonical quantisation framework.

Contribution

It identifies three distinct tensionless vacua arising from different constraint implementations, providing a detailed analysis of their properties and implications.

Findings

Existence of three distinct tensionless vacua.

Different vacuum choices affect central charges and spectra.

Re-examination of tensionless string quantum structure.

Abstract

Within the premise of canonical quantisation, we re-examine the quantum structure of bosonic tensionless string theory. In the classical theory, the worldsheet metric degenerates and the Bondi-Metnzer-Sachs (BMS) algebra arises as the residual symmetries on fixing the tensionless equivalent of the conformal gauge. In the quantum regime, we find, on careful examination, that there are multiple ways to impose constraints to restrict the physical Hilbert space, which in turn lead to three distinct choices of tensionless vacua. We analyse these vacua in detail, commenting on various aspects like the central charges and the spectrum around each of them.