Windings of twisted strings

Understand

Twistor string models have been known for more than a decade now but have come back under the spotlight recently with the advent of the scattering equation formalism which has greatly generalized the scope of these models.

• A striking ubiquitous feature of these models has always been that, contrary to usual string theory, they do not admit vibrational modes and thus describe only conventional field theory.
• In this paper we report on the surprising discovery of a whole new sector of one of these theories which we call "twisted strings," when spacetime has compact directions.
• We find that the spectrum is enhanced from a finite number of states to an infinite number of interacting higher spin massive states.