Perturbative Dynamics of Fractional Strings on Multiply Wound D-strings

Abstract

Fractional strings in the spectrum of states of open strings attached to a multiply wound D-brane is explained. We first describe the fractional string states in the low-energy effective theory where the topology of multiple winding is encoded in the gauge holonomy. The holonomy induces twisted boundary conditions responsible for the fractional moding of these states. We also describe fractional strings in world sheet formulation and compute simple scattering amplitudes for Hawking emission/absorption. Generalization to fractional DN-strings in a 1-brane 5-brane bound state is described. When a 1-brane and a 5-brane wraps $Q_1$ and $Q_5$ times respectively around a circle, the momentum of DN-strings is quantized in units of $2 π/L Q_1 Q_5$. These fractional states appear naturally in the perturbative spectrum of the theory.