Hamiltonian formulation of string field theory

Abstract

Witten's string field theory is quantized in the hamiltonian formalism. The constraints are solved and the hamiltonian is expressed in terms of only physical degrees of freedom. Thus, no Faddeev-Popov ghosts are introduced. Instead, the action contains terms of arbitrarily high order in the string functionals. Agreement with the standard results is demonstrated by an explicit calculation of the residues of the first few poles of the four-tachyon tree amplitude.