No label defined (Q4942967)

The authors discuss the classical and quantum propagation of strings in curved spacetimes. The classical string equations of motion in \(D\)-dimensional curved spacetime form a system of coupled nonlinear partial differential equations which are solved in different backgrounds and for different string configurations. The quantum string propagation is described using a canonical quantization procedure. The authors first study string propagation in the \(2+1\) Black Hole-anti de Sitter (BH-AdS) background. First and second order perturbations around the string center of mass are found together with the mass formula and compared to ordinary BH and black string background results. Classical and quantum string motion in ordinary \(D\)-dimensional AdS spacetime is then studied, found to be stable, and arbitrarily high mass states are constructed. This is contrasted with a de Sitter background where string instabilities develop and real mass solutions can only be defined up to a maximal mass. Unlike for a flat Minkowski background, they find a fine structure effect at all levels beyond the graviton in both de Sitter and AdS, and they find the Hagedorn critical temperature does not exist in AdS spacetime. They also find new classes of exact string solutions in a variety of curved backgrounds including Schwarzschild, de Sitter and anti de Sitter. The types of solutions include ``oscillating circular strings, closed stationary strings, infinitely long stationary strings, dynamical straight strings, and multi-string solutions describing finitely or infinitely many stationary or dynamical strings.'' The physical properties of these strings are described. Multi-string solutions are shown to be a general feature of spacetimes with positive or negative cosmological constant. Finally, they consider strings in static Robertson-Walker (RW) spacetimes. For circular string solutions they compute the equations of state and find a self-consistent solution to the Einstein equations in the case of positive spatial curvature. They quantize these solutions semi-classically and analyze the resulting spectra. In the RW background they also find stationary string solutions and compute relevant physical quantities. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0926.00022].