Vertex Operators and Scattering Amplitudes of the Bosonic Open String Theory in the Linear Dilaton Background

The operator formalism of the first quantized string theory is applied to the stringy excitations in the linear dilaton background. In particular, the normal-ordered vertex operators in the old-covariant spectrum of the bosonic open string, which correspond to the physical state solutions of the Virasoro constraints, are shown to satisfy the conformal algebra. Tree-level scattering amplitudes among different stringy states are computed using the coherent-state method and the modified inner product of the Hilbert space. Decoupling of the zero-norm states, i.e., the on-shell stringy Ward identities are shown to hold for all tree-level amplitudes under consideration.