JOINING-SPLITTING INTERACTION OF NONCRITICAL STRING (Q4449546)

Free string models in noncritical dimensions have been shown to exist both in the covariant [\textit{Z. Hasiewicz}, \textit{Z. Jaskólski} and \textit{A. Ostrowski}, Nucl. Phys., B 551, 705--722 (1999; Zbl 1050.81638)] and in the light-cone formulation [\textit{M. Daszkiewicz} and \textit{Z. Jaskólski}, Phys. Lett., B 484, 347--354 (2000; Zbl 1050.81638)] and consist of a continuous and a discrete series, the latter containing the noncritical Nambu-Goto bosonic and Ramond-Neveu-Schwarz fermionic strings. The construction of interactions for these so-called massive strings has been hampered so far even at the tree level by the non-solubility of the quantum Liouville theory describing one sector of longitudinal modes (which complement the transverse and the so-called Brower longitudinal modes). The paper extends the Mandelstam method of constructing tree string amplitudes to the bosonic massive string models of the discrete series and derives the general properties of the Liouville longitudinal excitations which are necessary and sufficient for the Lorentz covariance of the light-cone amplitudes.