IIA/B, Wound and Wrapped

TL;DR

This paper explores a new class of wound string theories in type IIB/A string theory, demonstrating their T-duality with DLCQ IIA/B and their relation to various wrapped brane theories, including OM and ODp theories.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of Wound String Theory, a T-dual to DLCQ IIA/B, extending the understanding of NCOS theories without D-branes or B-fields.

Findings

Wound string theories are T-dual to DLCQ IIA/B without D-branes.

These theories include positive winding closed strings and relate to various wrapped brane theories.

Wound string theory encompasses all p+1 NCOS theories as different states.

Abstract

We examine the T-duality relation between 1+1 NCOS and the DLCQ limit of type IIA string theory. We show that, as long as there is a compact dimension, one can meaningfully define an `NCOS' limit of IIB/A string theory even in the absence of D-branes (and even if there is no B-field). This yields a theory of closed strings with strictly positive winding, which is T-dual to DLCQ IIA/B without any D-branes. We call this the Type IIB/A Wound String Theory. The existence of decoupled sectors can be seen directly from the energy spectrum, and mirrors that of the DLCQ theory. It becomes clear then that all of the different p+1 NCOS theories are simply different states of this single Wound IIA/B theory which contain D-branes. We study some of the properties of this theory. In particular, we show that upon toroidal compactification, Wound string theory is U-dual to various Wrapped Brane theories which contain OM theory and the ODp theories as special states.