String Bit Description of Antiperiodic Fermion Worldsheet Fields

Abstract

We study a string bit Hamiltonian whose continuum limit describes anti-periodic (AP) anti-commuting worldsheet fields. We calculate the amplitude for transitions between an AP spin chain and a periodic (P) one in the continuum limit, M-> infinity where M is the bit number of either chain. We also numerically evaluate the corresponding amplitudes at increasing finite M to assess the convergence rate to the continuum. We then give the overlap equations for the transition AP+AP->AP, and numerically solve them for increasing $M$ values at a fixed value of x=K/M, where M is the bit number of the large chain and K is the bit number of one of the smaller chains. For this case, in contrast to the situation with an even number of AP chains, there is an obstacle to directly finding the continuum limit analytically. We suggest an indirect analytic approach to this problem: using the AP->P transition followed by a P->AP+AP transition, each of which has a relatively simple analytic continuum limit. We also show how bosonization of the fermion fields enables an analytic recursive evaluation of the AP$+$AP$\to$AP amplitudes.