Renormalization of couplings in embedded random surfaces

Abstract

We study the dressing of operators and flows of corresponding couplings in models of embedded random surfaces. We show that these dressings can be obtained by applying the methods of David and Distler and Kawai. We consider two extreme limits. In the first limit the string tension is large and the dynamics is dominated by the Nambu-Goto term. We analyze this theory around a classical solution in the situation where the length scale of the solution is large compared to the length scale set by the string tension. Couplings get dressed by the Liouville mode (which is now a composite field) in a non-trivial fashion. However this does not imply that the excitations around a physical "long string" have a phase space corresponding to an extra dimension. In the second limit the string tension is small and the dynamics is governed by the extrinsic curvature term. We show, perturbatively, that in this theory the relationship between the induced metric and the worldsheet metric is "renormalized," while the extrinsic curvature term receives a non-trivial dressing as well. This has the consequence that in a generic situation the dependence of couplings on the physical scale is different from that predicted by their beta functions.