title: Order out of disorder in a gas of elastic quantum strings in 2+1 dimensions.
abstract: A limiting case of a dynamical stripe state which is of potential significance to cuprate superconductors is considered: a gas of elastic quantum strings in 2+1 dimensions, interacting merely via a hard-core condition. It is demonstrated that this gas always solidifies, by a mechanism which is the quantum analog of the entropic interactions known from soft condensed matter physics.
authors.affiliation: Instituut-Lorentz for Theoretical Physics, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9506, NL-2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zaanen