Plateau's Problem and the Virasoro Conditions in the Theory of Duality

Abstract

It is pointed out that to recall Plateau's problem for the “world sheet” is relevant to understanding Virasoro's subsidiary conditions in dual-resonance models: If we choose isothermal parameters to describe the geodesical world sheet traced by the nucleonic string, then the four-positions should be harmonic and the condition for the choice of isothermal parameters proves to be related with the Virasoro condition. This point of view gives further insight into the correspondence to the situation we encounter when we need the Lorentz condition.