A Worldsheet Description of Instant Folded Strings

TL;DR

This paper introduces a worldsheet conformal field theory description of instant folded strings in time-like linear dilaton backgrounds, enabling calculation of their production rate and exploring implications for cosmology and black holes.

Contribution

It provides the first exact CFT framework for instant folded strings, connecting their creation to vertex operators on a time-like FZZT-brane.

Findings

Calculated the production rate of instant folded strings.

Established a worldsheet CFT description involving vertex operators.

Discussed potential implications for cosmology and black hole physics.

Abstract

Time-like linear dilaton backgrounds admit a classical solution that describes a closed folded string that is created at an instant. We refer to such strings as Instant Folded Strings (IFS). We study an exact worldsheet CFT description of an IFS that involves two vertex operators which describe two open string modes that propagate on a time-like FZZT-brane, which plays the role of a regulator to the IFS. We take advantage of this description to calculate the most basic quantity associated with IFSs - their production rate. Some implications of this calculation to stringy cosmology and black hole interior are briefly discussed.