Boundary Carrollian Conformal Field Theories and Open Null Strings

Abstract

We consider Carrollian conformal field theories in two dimensions and construct the boundary Carrollian conformal algebra (BCCA), opening up innumerable possibilities for further studies, given the growing relevance of Carrollian symmetries. We prove that the BCCA emerges by contracting a single copy of the Virasoro algebra. As an application, we construct, for the first time, open null strings and show that, for Dirichlet boundary conditions, we recover the BCCA as the algebra of constraints. We finally reconstruct our string results by taking the null limit of tensile open strings. Published by the American Physical Society 2025