Finite temperature bosonic closed strings: Thermal duality and the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition

Shyamoli Chaudhuri
2002 Physical Review D, Particles and fields  
We elucidate the properties of a gas of free closed bosonic strings in thermal equilibrium. Our starting point is the intensive generating functional of connected one-loop closed vacuum string graphs given by the Polyakov path integral. Invariance of the path integral under modular transformations gives a thermal duality invariant expression for the free energy of free closed strings at finite temperature. The free bosonic string gas exhibits a self-dual Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition.
more » ... thermodynamic potentials of the gas of free bosonic closed strings are shown to exhibit an infinite hierarchy of thermal self-duality relations. Note Added (Sep 2005).
doi:10.1103/physrevd.65.066008 fatcat:zn57nwbf2fa2bn6uaf5smeys5y