Mass Spectrum of Strings in Anti de Sitter Spacetime

TL;DR

This paper quantizes strings in anti de Sitter spacetime, revealing a stable, bounded spectrum with an infinite number of states, and explores how a cosmological constant affects the string mass spectrum and density of states.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of string spectra in AdS space, including effects of a cosmological constant and black string backgrounds, highlighting differences from flat spacetime.

Findings

String motion in AdS is stable with real frequencies.

Infinite states with arbitrarily high mass exist in AdS.

Density of states grows exponentially with a modified rate in AdS.

Abstract

We perform string quantization in anti de Sitter (AdS) spacetime. The string motion is stable, oscillatory in time with real frequencies $\omega_n= \sqrt{n^2+m^2\alpha'^2H^2}$ and the string size and energy are bounded. The string fluctuations around the center of mass are well behaved. We find the mass formula which is also well behaved in all regimes. There is an {\it infinite} number of states with arbitrarily high mass in AdS (in de Sitter (dS) there is a {\it finite} number of states only). The critical dimension at which the graviton appears is $D=25,$ as in de Sitter space. A cosmological constant $\Lambda\neq 0$ (whatever its sign) introduces a {\it fine structure} effect (splitting of levels) in the mass spectrum at all states beyond the graviton. The high mass spectrum changes drastically with respect to flat Minkowski spacetime. For $\Lambda<0,$ we find $<m^2>\sim \mid\Lambda\mid N^2,$ {\it independent} of $\alpha',$ and the level spacing {\it grows} with the eigenvalue of the number operator, $N.$ The density of states $\rho(m)$ grows like $\mbox{Exp}[(m/\sqrt{\mid\Lambda\mid}\;)^{1/2}]$ (instead of $\rho(m)\sim\mbox{Exp}[m\sqrt{\alpha'}]$ as in Minkowski space), thus {\it discarding} the existence of a critical string temperature. For the sake of completeness, we also study the quantum strings in the black string background, where strings behave, in many respects, as in the ordinary black hole backgrounds. The mass spectrum is equal to the mass spectrum in flat Minkowski space.