String quantization in accelerated frames and black holes

We quantize a closed bosonic string in a light-cone gauge in Rindler (uniformly accelerated) space-time and apply it to the Schwarzschild-Kruskal manifold. Inertial and accelerated particle states of the string associated to positive frequency modes with respect to the inertial and Rindler times respectively, are defined. There is a stretching effect of the string due to the presence of an event horizon. We explicitly solve the dynamical constraints leaving as physical degrees of freedom only those transverse to the acceleration. Different mass formulae are introduced depending on whether the centre of mass of the string has uniform speed or uniform acceleration. The expectation value of the Rindler (Schwarzschild) number-mode operator in the string ground state (tachyon) results equal to a thermal spectrum at the Hawking-Unruh temperature Ts = α/2π (∝ MPl(MPl/M)1/(D-3), where M is the black hole mass). We find T0 = M'/2π where M' is the accelerated ground state string mass and T0 the temperature Ts in dimensionless frequency units. Correlation functions of string coordinates and vertex operators and their Fourier transforms in accelerated time (string response functions) are computed and their thermal properties analyzed. (orig.)