Vacuum configuration of winding superstrings from non-standard semiclassical quantization

TL;DR

This paper develops a non-standard semiclassical quantization method for superstrings near the Hagedorn temperature, enabling more reliable calculations of the Hagedorn temperature in confining gauge theories.

Contribution

It introduces a novel semiclassical approach applicable when quantum fluctuations are large, and proves finiteness of the superstring partition function in relevant backgrounds.

Findings

Extended semiclassical methods for superstrings at high temperatures.

Proved finiteness of the superstring partition function in supergravity backgrounds.

Reformulated Hagedorn temperature computations in gauge theories.

Abstract

Semiclassical quantization techniques are unreliable, if the magnitude of the quantum fluctuations becomes comparable with a classical background scale. This is the case, for example, for superstrings at temperatures close to the Hagedorn temperature. Here, we propose a non-standard treatment which aims to extend the semiclassical approach for type-II superstrings to such cases. This allows us to provide a well-posed reformulation of recent computations of the Hagedorn temperature in a large class of confining gauge theories. Along the way, we fill a gap in the literature by proving that the standard semiclassical one-loop partition function of the Green-Schwarz superstring can be made finite, by means of a suitable choice of integration measures, for any background worldsheet in a target spacetime satisfying the (type-IIA) supergravity field equations.