Universality of correction to Luescher term in Polchinski-Strominger effective string theories

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the next correction to the universal Luescher term in Polchinski-Strominger effective string theories is also universal, aligning with Nambu-Goto results but maintaining consistency across all dimensions.

Contribution

The authors explicitly calculate the next correction to the Luescher term in Polchinski-Strominger theories, showing its universality and equivalence to Nambu-Goto energies without relying on field redefinitions.

Findings

Next correction to Luescher term is universal.

Ground and excited state energies match Nambu-Goto theory.

Polchinski-Strominger theory is consistent in any dimension.

Abstract

We show, by explicit calculation, that the next correction to the universal Luescher term in the effective string theories of Polchinski and Strominger is also universal. We find that to this order in inverse string-length, the ground-state energy as well as the excited-state energies are the same as those given by the Nambu-Goto string theory, the difference being that while the Nambu-Goto theory is inconsistent outside the critical dimension, the Polchinski-Strominger theory is by construction consistent for any space-time dimension. Our calculation explicitly avoids the use of any field redefinitions as they bring in many other issues that are likely to obscure the main points.