Perturbations of spiky strings in flat spacetimes

Abstract

Perturbations of a class of semiclassical strings known today as spiky strings, are studied using the well-known Jacobi equations for small normal deformations of an embedded timelike surface. It is shown that there exists finite normal perturbations of the spiky string worldsheets embedded in a 2+1 dimensional flat spacetime. Such perturbations lead to a rounding off of the spikes, which, in a way, demonstrates the stable nature of the unperturbed worldsheet. The same features appear for the dual spiky string solution and in the spiky as well as their dual solutions in 3 + 1 dimensional flat spacetime. Our results are based on exact solutions of the corresponding Jacobi equations which we obtain and use while constructing the profiles of the perturbed configurations.