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Species and Strings

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arxiv 1004.3744 v1 pith:K5PWPMV4 submitted 2010-04-21 hep-th

Species and Strings

classification hep-th
keywords speciestheorystringentropyscaleblackconsistentcounting
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Based on well-known properties of semi-classical black holes, we show that weakly-coupled string theory can be viewed as a theory of N = 1/g_s^2 particle species. This statement is a string theoretic realization of the fact that the fundamental scale in any consistent D-dimensional theory of gravity is not the Planck length l_D, but rather the species scale L_N = N^1/(D-2) l_D. Using this fact, we derive the bound on semi-classical black hole entropy in any consistent theory of gravity as S > N, which when applied to string theory provides additional evidence for the former relation. This counting also shows that the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy can be viewed as the entanglement entropy, without encountering any puzzle of species. We demonstrate that the counting of species extends to the M-theory limit. The role of the species scale is now played by the eleven-dimensional Planck length, beyond which resolution of distances is gravitationally-impossible. The conclusion is, that string theory is a theory of species and gets replaced by a pure gravitational theory in the limit when species become strongly coupled and decouple.

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Cited by 12 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

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