Scattering of Macroscopic Heterotic Strings

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that macroscopic heterotic strings exhibit non-trivial low-energy scattering behavior, which can be understood as geodesic motion on a specially constructed moduli space, confirmed by scattering amplitude calculations.

Contribution

It introduces a geometric framework for understanding low-energy scattering of macroscopic heterotic strings through a moduli space with a non-trivial metric.

Findings

Scattering occurs at order velocity squared.

Scattering described as geodesic motion on a moduli space.

Results agree with direct scattering amplitude calculations.

Abstract

We show that macroscopic heterotic strings, formulated as strings which wind around a compact direction of finite but macroscopic extent, exhibit non-trivial scattering at low energies. This occurs at order velocity squared and may thus be described as geodesic motion on a moduli space with a non-trivial metric which we construct. Our result is in agreement with a direct calculation of the string scattering amplitude.