The LQG -- String: Loop Quantum Gravity Quantization of String Theory I. Flat Target Space

There are investigated several objects of an INFINITE DIMENSIONAL GEOMETRY appearing from the second quantization of a free string. The paper contains 2 chapters: 1st is devoted to the infinite dimensional geometry of flag, fundamental and $\Pi$-spaces for Virasoro-Bott group and its nonassociative deformation defined by Gelfand-Fuchs 3-cocycle (Gelfand-Fuchs loop) as well as of infinite-dimensional non-Euclidean symplectic grassmannian, to the constructions of Verma modules,...

As of today there exist consistent, gauge-invariant string field theories describing all string theories: bosonic open and closed strings, open superstrings, heterotic strings and type II strings. The construction of these theories require algebraic ingredients, such as $A_\infty$ and $L_\infty$ homotopy algebras, geometric ingredients, relevant to the building of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces and the distribution of picture changing operators, and field-theoretic ingredi...

This book provides an introduction to string field theory (SFT). String theory is usually formulated in the worldsheet formalism, which describes a single string (first-quantization). While this approach is intuitive and could be pushed far due to the exceptional properties of two-dimensional theories, it becomes cumbersome for some questions or even fails at a more fundamental level. These motivations have led to the development of SFT, a description of string theory using t...

With the goal of understanding whether or not it is possible to construct a string theory which is consistent with loop quantum gravity (LQG), we study alternate versions of the Nambu-Goto action for a bosonic string. We consider two types of modifications. The first is a phenomenological action based on the observation that LQG tells us that areas of two-surfaces are operators in quantum geometry and are bounded from below. This leads us to a string action which is similar t...

We set up a unified framework to compare the quantization of the bosonic string in two approaches: One proposed by Thiemann, based on methods of loop quantum gravity, and the other using the usual Fock space quantization. Both yield a diffeomorphism invariant quantum theory. We discuss why there is no central charge in Thiemann's approach but a discontinuity characteristic for the loop approach to diffeomorphism invariant theories. Then we show the (un)physical consequences o...

This is a non-technical talk given at the Sixth Marcel Grossman Meeting on General Relativity, Kyoto, Japan in June 1991. Some developments in string theory over the last six years are discussed together with their qualitative implications for issues in quantum gravity.

The loop quantum gravity technique is applied to the free bosonic string. A Hilbert space similar to loop space in loop quantum gravity as well as representations of diffeomorphism and hamiltonian constraints on it are constructed. The string in this representation can be viewed as a set of interacting relativistic particles each carrying a certain momentum. Two different regularizations of the hamiltonian constraint are proposed. The first of them is anomaly-free and give ri...

The gauge invariant observables of the closed bosonic string are quantized without anomalies in four space-time dimensions by constructing their quantum algebra in a manifestly covariant approach. The quantum algebra is the kernel of a derivation on the universal envelopping algebra of an infinite-dimensional Lie algebra. The search for Hilbert space representations of this algebra is separated from its construction, and postponed.

In this paper we show that the holomorphic representation is appropriate for description in a consistent way string and string field theories, when the considered number of component fields of the string field is finite. A new Lagrangian for the closed string is obtained and shown to be equivalent to Nambu-Goto's Lagrangian. We give the notion of anti-string, evaluate the propagator for the string field, and calculate the convolution of two of them.

It is hoped that these lectures will give a point of entry into that vast web of related ideas that go under the name "string theory". I start with a more or less qualitative introduction to gravity as a field theory and sketch how one might try to quantize it. Quantizing gravity using the usual techniques of field theory will turn out to be unsuccessful, and that will be a motivation for trying an indirect approach: string theory. I present bosonic string theory, quantize th...