String field theory and physical interpretation of D=1 strings

Abstract

We describe a field theoretic formulation for one-dimensional string theory. It is given by the collective field representation of the matrix model and leads to a physical interpretation of the theory as that of a massless scalar field in two dimensions. The additional dimension, coming from the large-N color of the matrix model, has an extent which goes to infinity in the continuum limit. The interactions of the field theory are non-zero only at the boundaries of this additional dimension.