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mitchell porter
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"Loop variables for string theory"
That is the title of a http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0207098" .
I know quite a few people have wondered what string theory would look like in the framework of loop quantum gravity. Well, this is a glimpse of how it would be. Only a glimpse, because no-one else is building on Sathiapalan's work and so, like the early days of string theory, it's possible that he's overlooking the right constructions. But the spirit of it must be correct. I had vague thoughts along these lines myself, but this makes it all very clear and retrospectively obvious.
String theory is equivalent to a field theory with an infinite number of fields of arbitrarily high spin, most of them massive. (These fields correspond to the different modes of the string.) So obviously, if you form a Wilson loop in such a theory, you'll be integrating an infinite tower of higher-spin fields around the loop. It's even more obvious that this is how it would be for Vasiliev higher-spin gauge theories, and something like this must be implicit in http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.3297" .
At first glance, I'm finding Sathiapalan's algebraic constructions somewhat opaque and baroque. As I said, since he's doing this alone, he may be missing some details. (Perhaps it can be compared to http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/au:+kroyter/0/1/0/all/0/1" on lattice string field theory.) But I think that in essence this must be the right way to do "stringy LQG", and it offers yet another direction for comparison with "non-stringy LQG".
That is the title of a http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0207098" .
I know quite a few people have wondered what string theory would look like in the framework of loop quantum gravity. Well, this is a glimpse of how it would be. Only a glimpse, because no-one else is building on Sathiapalan's work and so, like the early days of string theory, it's possible that he's overlooking the right constructions. But the spirit of it must be correct. I had vague thoughts along these lines myself, but this makes it all very clear and retrospectively obvious.
String theory is equivalent to a field theory with an infinite number of fields of arbitrarily high spin, most of them massive. (These fields correspond to the different modes of the string.) So obviously, if you form a Wilson loop in such a theory, you'll be integrating an infinite tower of higher-spin fields around the loop. It's even more obvious that this is how it would be for Vasiliev higher-spin gauge theories, and something like this must be implicit in http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.3297" .
At first glance, I'm finding Sathiapalan's algebraic constructions somewhat opaque and baroque. As I said, since he's doing this alone, he may be missing some details. (Perhaps it can be compared to http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/au:+kroyter/0/1/0/all/0/1" on lattice string field theory.) But I think that in essence this must be the right way to do "stringy LQG", and it offers yet another direction for comparison with "non-stringy LQG".
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