Skip to content

Duality as a Gauge Symmetry and Topology Change

Amit Giveon

hep-tharXiv:hep-th/9310016

Abstract

Duality groups as (spontaneously broken) gauge symmetries for toroidal backgrounds, and their role in (∞-dimensional) underlying string gauge algebras are reviewed. For curved backgrounds, it is shown that there is a duality in the moduli space of WZNW sigma-models, that can be interpreted as a broken gauge symmetry. In particular, this duality relates the backgrounds corresponding to axially gauged abelian cosets, G/U(1)a, to vectorially gauged abelian cosets, G/U(1)v. Finally, topology change in the moduli space of WZNW sigma-models is discussed.

Create a lesson