Worldline theories with towers of internal states

Abel, Steven; Lewis, Daniel

Abstract

We study particle theories that have a tower of worldline internal degrees of freedom. Such a theory can arise when the worldsheet of closed strings is dimensionally reduced to a worldline, in which case the tower is infinite with regularly spaced masses. But our discussion is significantly more general than this, and there is scope to consider all kinds of internal degrees of freedom carried by the propagating particle. For example it is possible to consider towers corresponding to other geometries, or towers with no obvious geometric interpretation that still yield a modular invariant theory. Truncated towers generate non-local particle theories that share with string theory the property of having a Gross-Mende-like saddle point in their amplitudes. This provides a novel framework for constructing exotic theories which may have desirable properties such as finiteness and modular invariance.

Citation

Abel, S., & Lewis, D. (2020). Worldline theories with towers of internal states. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2020(12), Article 69. https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep12%282020%29069

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 29, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Dec 10, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-12
• Deposit Date: Apr 13, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 13, 2021
• Journal: Journal of High Energy Physics
• Print ISSN: 1126-6708
• Electronic ISSN: 1029-8479
• Publisher: Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2020
• Issue: 12
• Article Number: 69
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep12%282020%29069
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1249822
• Related Public URLs: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.07242