Classification of Cohomogeneity One Strings

Abstract

We define the cohomogeneity one string, string with continuous symmetries, as its world surface is tangent to a Killing vector field of a target space. We classify the Killing vector fields by an equivalence relation using isometries of the target space. We find that the equivalence classes of Killing vectors in Minkowski spacetime are partitioned into seven families. It is clarified that there exist seven types of strings with spacelike symmetries and four types of strings with timelike symmetries, stationary strings.