Multi-boundary effects in Dirichlet String Theory

Abstract

String amplitudes with an arbitrary number of world-sheet boundaries on which the coordinates satisfy Dirichlet boundary conditions are analyzed in a path integral framework. Special attention is payed to the novel divergences associated with such conditions. Certain helicity amplitudes involving massless closed-string states are free of such divergences to all orders in perturbation theory and their behavior can be analysed unambiguously. The high energy fixed-angle behavior of these amplitudes is discussed in the presence of one or two boundaries and the asymptotic behavior of the amplitudes is shown to be power behaved.