Tensionless tales: vacua and critical dimensions

Recently, a careful canonical quantisation of the theory of closed bosonic tensionless strings has resulted in the discovery of three separate vacua and hence three different quantum theories that emerge from this single classical tensionless theory. In this note, we perform lightcone quantisation with the aim of determination of the critical dimension of these three inequivalent quantum theories. The satisfying conclusion of a rather long and tedious calculation is that one of vacua does not lead to any constraint on the number of dimensions, while the other two give D = 26. This implies that all three quantum tensionless theories can be thought of as consistent sub-sectors of quantum tensile bosonic closed string theory.

Automated summary

A recent careful quantisation study of the theory of closed bosonic tensionless strings has revealed three separate vacua with different critical dimensions. One vacuum imposes no constraint on the number of dimensions, while the other two lead to D = 26. This suggests that all three tensionless quantum theories can be considered as consistent sub-sectors of quantum tensile bosonic closed string theory.