Spinor and Twistor Formulations of Tensionless Bosonic Strings in Four Dimensions

Abstract

Spinor and twistor formulations of tensionless bosonic strings in 4-dimensional Minkowski space are constructed. We begin with a first-order action that is equivalent to the Nambu-Goto action in the tensionful case and that leads to a spinorial action in the tensionless case. From this spinorial action, we find an alternative spinorial action useful for constructing a simple twistor formulation of tensionless strings. The twistor formulation is steadily constructed in accordance with a fundamental concept of twistor theory. We investigate local internal symmetries inherent in the twistorial action for a tensionless string and carry out some classical analyses of the tensionless string expressed in a twistorial form.

30 pages, no figures, minor corrections, a footnote added, published version