Holography and the Canonical Ensemble of Fermionic Strings

We show that the canonical ensemble in any of the six supersymmetric string theories, type IIA and IIB, type IB and type I', or heterotic E_8 x E_8 and Spin(32)/Z_2, exhibits a strong version of holography: the growth of the number of degrees of freedom in the free energy at high temperatures is identical to that in a two-dimensional quantum field theory. We clarify the precise nature of the thermal duality phase transition in each case, confirming that it lies within the Kosterlitz-Thouless universality class. We show that, in the presence of Dbranes, and a consequent Yang-Mills gauge sector, the thermal ensemble of type II strings is infrared stable, with neither tachyons nor massless scalar tadpoles. Supersymmetry remains unbroken in the oriented closed string sector, but is broken by thermal effects in the full unoriented open and closed type I string theory. We identify an order parameter for an unusual phase transition in the worldvolume gauge theory signalled by the short distance behavior of the pair correlator of timelike Wilson loops. Note Added (Sep 2005).