Stringy AdS3 from the Worldsheet

Understand

We investigate the behaviour of the bosonic string on AdS3 with H-flux at stringy scales, looking in particular for a `tensionless' limit in which there are massless higher spin gauge fields.

• We do this by revisiting the physical spectrum of the sl(2,R)$_k$ WZW model and considering the limit in which k becomes small.
• At k=3 we find that there is an infinite stringy tower of massless higher spin fields which are part of a continuum of light states.
• This can be viewed as a novel tensionless limit, which appears to be distinct from that inferred from the symmetric orbifold description of superstring AdS3 vacua.