arXiv:1610.02052v3 [hep-th] 12 Jan 2017 YITP-SB-16-36 Chiral Closed strings: Four massless states scattering amplitude Marcelo M. Leite∗and Warren Siegel† C N Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3840 Abstract We compute the scattering amplitudes of four massless states for chiral (closed) bosonic and type II superstrings using the Kawai-Lewellen-Tye (KLT) factorization method. The amplitude in the chiral bosonic case is identical to a field theory amplitude corresponding to the spin-2tachyon, massless gravitational sector and massive spin-2 tardyon states of the spectrum.Chiral type II superstrings amplitude only possess poles associated with the massless gravitational sector.We briefly discuss the extension of the calculation to heterotic superstrings. Keywords: Conformal Field Models in String Theory, Scattering Amplitudes, String Duality, Gauge-gravity correspondence ∗Permanent Address: Laborat´orio de F´ısica Te´orica e Computacional, Departamento de F´ısica, Universi- dade Federal de Pernambuco, 50670-901, Recife, PE, Brazil (mleite@df.ufpe.br) †siegel@insti.physics.sunysb.edu 1
I.INTRODUCTION The connection among field-theoretic scattering amplitudes and string theory amplitudes proposed in a series of papers by Cachazo, He and Yuan (CHY) [1–4] shed further light in the mathematical properties of scattering amplitudes. Within this setting, supersymmetric gauge theories, gravity and also field theory with arbitrary spin in arbitrary dimensions might be better understood in principle, since the final form of the amplitude with just few simple terms eliminate the necessity of dealing with a lot of cancelations involved in intermediate steps. In the string-theoretic context, the analogue of the approach proposed byCHYincludes the scattering equations [5] as constraints implemented inside the amplitude through the insertion of Dirac delta functions in the vertex operators (see alsoe. g.[6]). A second alter- native to stringy scattering amplitudes proposes a new gauge condition on the worldsheet which effectively yields the scattering equations after integration over the worldsheet vari- able ¯z, without the use of delta functions [7]. Recently, a combination of the two methods was proposed. The modification of the boundary conditions for the worldsheet fields along with the choice of conformal gauge originated the “chiral” string in its different versions: bosonic, type II and heterotic strings [8]. It is noteworthy to point out that the new chiral strings described in the present work dif- fer from other chiral strings already discussed in the literature. It is important to emphasize their difference and similarities. Whereas the usual standard string theories have towers of massive states with higher angular momentum/spin, a curious aspect of chiral string theories is the finite number of states in the spectrum.Inspired in the work involving tensionless strings [9], the first analysis which indicated only two massive states with the same absolute value but with different signs for the masses in the spectrum of the bosonic string (as well as three massless states) was carried out in [10] in the context of BRST approach, but the model was discarded due to inconsistencies: those states have negative norm and decouple of physical scattering amplitudes. More recently, Ambitwistors chiral strings were developed [11].In this chiral theory only massless states survive in the spectrum due to the absence of normal ordering. This happens because theOP E < XX >is trivial such that important operators likeeik.Xdo not acquire anomalous conformal weight, therefore not being able to compensate the anomalous 2
conformal weight of a generic polynomial, say, in∂Xµfor the values ofk2on the mass- shell.In addition, all the ghosts and fields of the various Ambitwistor strings are purely holomorphic. An interesting connection among the Ambitwistor strings with tensionless and tensionful strings was assessed very recently in Ref.[12].From now on we switch to the chiral string theory that is going to be described below with ghosts and fields possessing holomorphic and antiholomorphic components and with nontrivial OPES; see below. As mentioned above, one of the amazing features of these new closed string theories is the finite number of states in their spectrum. The chiral bosonic string possesses only three mass levels: a spin-2 tachyon, massless (“gravitational”) sector and a massive spin-2 “tardyon”. The chiral type II superstring only contains the massless states, whereas the chiral heterotic superstring can have either tachyon or tardyon (never both) beyond the massless sector. In the present work we compute the scattering amplitude of four massless chiral string states for the bosonic and type II superstrings using the Kawai-Lewellen-Tye [13] factor- ization of closed string amplitudes as the product of open string amplitudes. Remarkably, their form indicates that they can be expressed entirely as amplitudes obtained using field theory techniques.Furthermore, we use the factorization property to prove that they can be obtained as the product of two three-point amplitudes involving two external massless and one intermediate arbitrary state of the corresponding string spectrum. Using common aspects of bosonic, type II and heterotic strings, we construct the scattering amplitude of four massless states of the heterotic superstring at the massless gravitational sector. II.REVIEW OF VERTEX OPERATORS AND COMPUTATION OF 3-POINT SCATTERING AMPLITUDES A.Closed Chiral Bosonic String The chiral bosonic string has only the matter fieldsXµ(z,¯z) and conformal ghosts (b(z), c(z),˜b(¯z),˜c(¯z)).The operator product expansion ofXµis modified (due to a Bo- goliubov transformation in the oscillators) when compared to the standard bosonic string to < Xµ(zi,¯zi)Xν(zj,¯zj)>=α′ 2ηµνln (¯zij zij ) ,(1) 3
wherezij=zi−zj.(The OPE for the ghosts also presents a factor of (−1) in the right mover sector, namely<˜b(¯zi),˜c(¯zj)>=−1 ¯zij).The modification in comparison with the usual bosonic string occurs only in the right-mover sector characterized by the coordinates ¯zi. This can be interpreted as a change of sign (“flipping”) in the metric for all right-mover fields.For instance, the operatoreik.X(z,¯z)for the chiral string has conformal dimension (α′k2 4,−α′k2 4). The spectrum has only 3 mass levels: a spin-2 tachyon (M2=−4 α′), a massless state (composed by a graviton, a massless two-form field and a massless scalar dilaton) and a spin-2 tardyon (M2=4 α′). The spectrum can be classified in terms of vertex operators as follows. 1. Tachyonic sector (M2=−4 α′) whose vertex operator is given by V−= ¯ǫµν¯∂Xµ¯∂Xνeik.X(z,¯z).(2) 2. Massless gravitational sector (includes graviton, dilaton and antisymetric tensor), with V0=eµν∂Xµ¯∂Xνeik.X(z,¯z),(3) eµν=eµ˜eν.(4) 3. Tardyonic sector (M2=4 α′) vertex operator reads V+=ǫµν∂Xµ∂Xνeik.X(z,¯z).(5) Observe that the polarization tensor of the gravitational sector was decomposed into the direct product of two vector polarizations.This will help to present the scattering amplitudes in their factorized form. The location of three vertex operators in a generic tree- level amplitude have to be specified in the scattering of, say,Nstates. For bosonic strings this specification consists in attaching the ghost factorc(z)˜c(¯z) in the exact position of the vertex operator.ForN >3, in addition to the above insertions, the remaining (N−3) coordinates are integrated over (z,¯z). Before proceeding in the evaluation of scattering amplitudes, we anticipate that the tachy- onic and tardyonic states have ghost-like nature.We shall unveil this feature later, when performing the comparison using theKLTcomputation of the four massless external states with the product of two three-point scattering amplitudes involving two external massless states (gravitational sector) and one internal tachyon or tardyon.The agreement among these results only occurs exactly if the propagator for the tachyon or tardyon includes a 4
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