Thermofield dynamics extension of the open string field theory

Abstract

We study the application of the rules of thermofield dynamics (TFD) to the covariant formulation of open-string field theory. We extend the states space and fields according to the duplication rules of TFD and construct the corresponding classical action. The result is interpreted as a theory whose fields would encode the statistical information of open strings. The physical spectrum of the free theory is studied through the cohomology of the extended Becchi, Rouet, Stora and Tyutin (BRST) charge, and, as a result, we get new fields in the spectrum emerging by virtue of the quantum entanglement, and, noticeably, it presents degrees of freedom that could be identified as those of closed strings. We also show, however, that their appearing in the action is directly related to the choice of the inner product in the extended algebra, so that different sectors of fields could be eliminated from the theory by choosing that product conveniently. Finally, we study the extension of the three-vertex interaction and provide a simple prescription for it of which the results at tree level agree with those of the conventional theory.