Open string derivation of winding states in thermal noncommutative field theories

The `winding state' behavior appears in the two-loop nonplanar contribution to the partition function in thermal noncommutative field theories. We derive this feature directly from the purely open string theory analysis in the presence of the constant background $B$-field; we compute the two-loop partition function for worldsheets with a handle and a boundary when the time direction of the Euclideanized target space is compactified. In contrast to the closed-string-inspired approach, it is not necessary to add infinite number of extra degrees of freedom. Furthermore, we find a piece of supporting evidence toward the conjecture that, in the UV limit, the noncommutativity parameter plays the role of the effective string scale in noncommutative field theories.