Strings in Noncompact Spacetimes: Boundary Terms and Conserved Charges

Abstract

We study some of the novel properties of conformal field theories with noncompact target spaces as applied to string theory. Standard CFT results get corrected by boundary terms in the target space in a way consistent with the expected spacetime physics. For instance, one-point functions of general operators on the sphere and boundary operators on the disk need not vanish; we show that they are instead equal to boundary terms in spacetime. By applying this result to vertex operators for spacetime gauge transformations with support at infinity, we derive formulas for conserved gauge charges in string theory. This approach provides a direct CFT definition of ADM energy-momentum in string theory.