Some computations in string topology

Some computations in background-independent off-shell string theory.

Recently, background independent open-string field theory has been formally defined in the space of all two-dimensional world-sheet theories. In this paper, to make the construction more concrete, I compute the action for an off-shell tachyon field of a certain simple type. From the computation it emerges that, although the string field action does not coincide with the world-sheet (matter) par...

String topology for stacks

We establish the general machinery of string topology for differentiable stacks. This machinery allows us to treat on an equal footing free loops in stacks and hidden loops. In particular, we give a good notion of a free loop stack, and of a mapping stack Map(Y,X), where Y is a compact space and X a topological stack, which is functorial both in X and Y and behaves well enough with respect to p...

Higher String Topology Operations

In [1] Chas and Sullivan have defined an intersection-type product on the homology of the free loop space LM of an oriented manifold M. In this paper we show how to extend this construction to a topological conformal field theory of degree d. In particular, we get operations on H∗LM which are parameterized by the homology of the moduli space of open-closed Riemann surfaces.

Notes on String Topology

Some Computations of Partition Functions and Tachyon Potentials in Background Independent Off-Shell String Theory

We discuss what information can be safely extracted from background independent off-shell string theory. The major obstacle in doing so is that renormalization conditions of the underlying worldsheet theories are not exactly known. To get some insight, we first consider the tachyon and gauge field backgrounds and carry out computations in different renormalization schemes for both, bosonic stri...