Light Cone Gauge - String Theory

String Theory

In string theory, light-cone gauge fixes the reparameterization invariance on the world sheet by

where is a constant and is the worldsheet time.

The advantage of light-cone gauge is that all ghosts and other unphysical degrees of freedom can be eliminated. The disadvantage is that some symmetries such as Lorentz symmetry become obscured (they become non-manifest, i.e. hard to prove).

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