Superstrings in thermal anti-de Sitter space

Abstract

Abstract We revisit the calculation of the thermal free energy for string theory in three-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime with Neveu-Schwarz-Neveu-Schwarz flux. The path integral calculation is exploited to confirm the off-shell Hilbert space and we find that the Casimir of the discrete representations of the isometry group takes values in a half-open interval. We extend the free energy calculation to the case of superstrings, calculate the boundary toroidal twisted partition function in the Ramond-Ramond sector, and prove lower bounds on the boundary conformal dimension from the bulk perspective. We classify Ramond-Ramond ground states and construct their second quantized partition function. The partition function exhibits intriguing modular properties.