Monads, strings, and M-theory
Abstract
The recent developments in string theory suggest that the space-time coordinates should be generalized to non-commuting matrices. Postulating this suggestion as the fundamental geometrical principle, we formulate a candidate for covariant second quantized RNS superstrings as a topological field theory in two dimensions. Our construction is a natural non-Abelian extension of the RNS string. It also naturally leads to a model with manifest 11-dimensional covariance, which we conjecture to be a formulation of M-theory. The non-commuting space-time coordinates of the strings are further generalized to non-commuting anti-symmetric tensors. The usual space-time picture and the free superstrings appear only in certain special phases of the model. We derive a simple set of algebraic equations, which determine the moduli space of our model. We test some aspects of our conjectural M-theory for the case of compactification on T2.
- Publication:
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Nuclear Physics B
- Pub Date:
- June 1998
- DOI:
- 10.1016/S0550-3213(98)00047-9
- arXiv:
- arXiv:hep-th/9706130
- Bibcode:
- 1998NuPhB.520..229H
- Keywords:
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- High Energy Physics - Theory
- E-Print:
- 36 pages, TeX, harvmac, minor corrections with added reference