Finite Temperature Gases of Fermionic Strings

Abstract

We show that in the absence of a Ramond-Ramond sector both the type IIA and type IIB free string gases have a thermal instability due to low temperature tachyon modes. The gas of free IIA strings undergoes a thermal duality transition into a gas of free IIB strings at the self-dual temperature. The free heterotic string gas is a tachyon-free ensemble with gauge symmetry SO(16)$\times$SO(16) in the presence of a timelike Wilson line background. It exhibits a holographic duality relation undergoing a self-dual phase transition with positive free energy and positive specific heat. The type IB open and closed string ensemble is related by thermal duality to the type I' string ensemble. We identify the order parameter for the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition from a low temperature gas of short open strings to a high temperature long string phase at or below T_C. Note Added (Sep 2005).

Note Added (Sep 2005)

References in corpus (8)

• Dirichlet-Branes and Ramond-Ramond Charges
• A Correspondence Principle for Black Holes and Strings
• D-Branes and Dual Gauge Theories in Type 0 String Theory
• Type IIA-Heterotic Duals With Maximal Supersymmetry
• Duality without Supersymmetry: The Case of the SO(16)xSO(16) String
• Tachyon-free Orientifolds of Type 0B Strings in Various Dimensions
• Another Length Scale in String Theory?
• Pair Correlation Function of Wilson Loops

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Adventures in Thermal Duality (I): Extracting Closed-Form Solutions for Finite-Temperature Effective Potentials in String Theory
• Adventures in Thermal Duality (II): Towards a Duality-Covariant String Thermodynamics
• Finite Temperature Bosonic Closed Strings: Thermal Duality and the Kosterlitz Thouless Transition
• Thermal Tachyons and the "g"-Theorem