High spin limits and non-abelian T-duality

The action of the non-abelian T-dual of the WZW model is related to an appropriate gauged WZW action via a limiting procedure. We extend this type of equivalence to other sigma-models with non-abelian isometrics and their non-abelian T-duals, focusing on Principal Chiral models. We reinforce and refine this equivalence by arguing that the non-abelian T-duals are the effective backgrounds describing states of an appropriate parent theory corresponding to divergently large highest weight representations. The proof involves carrying out a subtle limiting procedure in the group representations and relating them to appropriate limits in the corresponding backgrounds. We illustrate the general method by providing several non-trivial examples. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.