Exact string solutions and duality

TL;DR

This paper reviews known exact classical solutions in bosonic string theory, including cosets, plane wave backgrounds, and F-models, and discusses their duality relations, with new four-dimensional solutions explicitly constructed.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of exact classical solutions in string theory and introduces explicit four-dimensional solutions with Minkowski signature.

Findings

Explicit four-dimensional solutions with Minkowski signature

Analysis of duality relations among solutions

Classification of solutions into cosets, plane waves, and F-models

Abstract

We review known exact classical solutions in (bosonic) string theory. The main classes of solutions are `cosets' (gauged WZW models), `plane wave'-type backgrounds (admitting a covariantly constant null Killing vector) and `$F$-models' (backgrounds with two null Killing vectors generalising the `fundamental string' solution). The recently constructed $D=4$ solutions with Minkowski signature are given explicitly. We consider various relations between these solutions and, in particular, discuss some aspects of the duality symmetry. [To appear in the Proceedings of the 2nd Journe'e Cosmologie, Observatoire de Paris, June 2-4, 1994.]