Planetoid strings: solutions and perturbations

A novel ansatz for solving the string equations of motion and constraints in generic curved backgrounds, namely the planetoid ansatz, was proposed recently by some authors. We construct several specific examples of planetoid strings in curved backgrounds which include Lorentzian wormholes, spherical Rindler spacetime and the (2 + 1)-dimensional black hole. A semiclassical quantization is performed and the Regge relations for the planetoids are obtained. The general equations for the study of small perturbations about these solutions are written down using the standard, covariant formalism. Applications to special cases such as those of planetoid strings in Minkowski and spherical Rindler spacetimes are also presented.