Duality Symmetry of String Theory: A Worldsheet Perspective

Abstract

We study duality and local symmetries of closed bosonic string from the perspectives of worldsheet approach in the phase space path integral formalism. It is shown that the Ward identities reflecting the local symmetries associated with massless excitations such as graviton and antisymmetric tensor can be cast in a duality covariant form. It is shown how the manifestly O(d,d) invariant Hamiltonian can be obtained in the Hassan-Sen toroidal compactification scheme, d being the number of compact dimensions. It is proposed that massive excited states possess a T-duality symmetry for constant (tensor) backgrounds. This conjecture is verified for the first massive level.