2D Principal Chiral Field at Large N as a Possible Solvable 2D String Theory

We obtain a bilocal classical field theory as the large $N$ limit of the chiral Gross--Neveu (or non--abelian Thirring) model. Exact classical solutions that describe topological solitons are obtained. It is shown that their mass spectrum agrees with the large $N$ limit of the spectrum of the chiral Gross--Neveu model.

I describe how integrable quantum field theories in 2 spacetime dimensions are characterized by infinite dimensional quantum group symmetries, namely the q-deformations of affine Lie algebras, and their Yangian limit. These symmetries can provide a new non-perturbative formulation of the theories.

We discuss the equivalence between a string theory and the two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory with SU(N) gauge group for finite N. We find a sector which can be interpreted as a sum of covering maps from closed string world-sheets to the target space, whose covering number is less than N. This gives an asymptotic expansion of 1/N whose large N limit becomes the chiral sector defined by D.Gross and W.Taylor. We also discuss that the residual part of the partition function provi...

Minor corrections made and several references changed.

Analytical and numerical methods are applied to principal chiral models on a two-dimensional lattice and their predictions are tested and compared. New techniques for the strong coupling expansion of SU(N) models are developed and applied to the evaluation of the two-point correlation function. The momentum-space lattice propagator is constructed with precision O(\beta^{10}) and an evaluation of the correlation length is obtained for several different definitions. Three-loop ...

We study the non-singlet sectors of Matrix Quantum Mechanics in application to two-dimensional string theory. We use the chiral formalism, which operates directly with incoming and outgoing asymptotic states, related by a scattering operator. We give a prescription for evaluating the tree level non-singlet scattering amplitudes given the profile of the Fermi sea. In the case of a stationary Fermi sea our general formula for the adjoint representation reproduces Maldacena's sc...

We describe a novel double scaling limit of large N Yang-Mills theory on a two-dimensional torus and its relation to the geometry of the principal moduli spaces of holomorphic differentials.

We propose a duality between the large-N gauged harmonic oscillator and a novel string theory in two dimensions.

We argue that the relevant higher gauge group for the non-abelian generalization of the self-dual string equation is the string 2-group. We then derive the corresponding equations of motion and discuss their properties. The underlying geometric picture is a string structure, i.e. a categorified principal bundle with connection whose structure 2-group is the string 2-group. We readily write down the explicit elementary solution to our equations, which is the categorified analo...

We describe a topological string theory which reproduces many aspects of the 1/N expansion of SU(N) Yang-Mills theory in two spacetime dimensions in the zero coupling (A=0) limit. The string theory is a modified version of topological gravity coupled to a topological sigma model with spacetime as target. The derivation of the string theory relies on a new interpretation of Gross and Taylor's ``\Omega^{-1} points.'' We describe how inclusion of the area, coupling of chiral sec...