Compactified strings as quantum statistical partition function on the Jacobian torus.

We show that the solitonic contribution of toroidally compactified strings corresponds to the quantum statistical partition function of a free particle living on higher dimensional spaces. In the simplest case of compactification on a circle, the Hamiltonian is the Laplacian on the 2g-dimensional Jacobian torus associated with the genus g Riemann surface corresponding to the string world sheet. T duality leads to a symmetry of the partition function mixing time and temperature. Such a classical-quantum correspondence and T duality shed some light on the well-known interplay between time and temperature in quantum field theory and classical statistical mechanics.