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The decay of highly excited open strings

1989; Elsevier BV; Volume: 315; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0550-3213(89)90446-x

1873-1562

Dann Mitchell, Neil Turok, R. Wilkinson, Philippe Jetzer,

Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions

We calculate the decay rates of leading Regge trajectory states for very high level number in open bosonic string theories, ignoring tachyon final states. The optical theorem simplifies the analysis while enabling identification of the different mass level decay channels. Our main result is that (in four dimensions) the greatest single channel is the emission of a single photon and a state of the next mass level down. A simple asymptotic formula for arbitrarily high level number is given for this process. We also calculate the total decay rate exactly up to N = 100. It shows little variation over this range but appears to decrease for larger N. We check our formalism in examples and calculate the decay rate of the first excited level for open superstring theories. The calculation may also have implication for high spin meson resonances.s