The 2d Free Boson Minkowski CFT with Asymptotic Charges

Abstract

We explicitly construct the states of the 2d free boson on the infinite line with specified asymptotic charges. The Minkowski CFT states derive from (the analytic continuation of) the shrinking limit of Euclidean angular quantization, wherein the superselection sector for fixed asymptotic charges corresponds to specific endpoint operators for the angular quantization on the sphere. When applied to string theory, we obtain a new class of fundamental strings that are neither open nor closed and which we dub "stretched strings". We describe constant-time snapshots of the worldsheets of the different types of stretched strings, and as a special case we find a heuristic picture of Maldacena's "long strings" in the $c=1$ string theory.