Chaotic and Thermal Aspects in the Highly Excited String S-Matrix

Abstract: We compute tree level scattering amplitudes involving more than one highly excited states and tachyons in bosonic string theory. We use these amplitudes to understand chaotic and thermal aspects of the excited string states lending support to the Susskind-Horowitz-Polchinski correspondence principle. The unaveraged amplitudes exhibit chaos in the resonance distribution as a function of kinematic parameters, which can be described by random matrix theory. Upon coarse-graining these amplitudes are shown to exponentiate, and capture various thermal features, including features of a stringy version of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis as well as notions of typicality. Further, we compute the effective string form factor corresponding to the highly excited states, and argue for the random walk behaviour of the long strings.