Exactly solvable strings in Minkowski spacetime

Abstract

We study the integrability of the equations of motion for the Nambu–Goto strings with a cohomogeneity-one symmetry in Minkowski spacetime. A cohomogeneity-one string has a world surface which is tangent to a Killing vector field. By virtue of the Killing vector, the equations of motion reduce to the geodesic equation in the orbit space. Cohomogeneity-one strings are classified into seven classes (types I to VII). We investigate the integrability of the geodesic equations for all the classes and find that the geodesic equations are integrable. For types I to VI, the integrability comes from the existence of Killing vectors on the orbit space which are the projections of Killing vectors on Minkowski spacetime. For type VII, the integrability is related to a projected Killing vector and a nontrivial Killing tensor on the orbit space. We also find that the geodesic equations of all types are exactly solvable, and show the solutions.