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Universal aspects of string propagation on curved backgrounds

String propagation on D-dimensional curved backgrounds with Lorentzian signature is formulated as a geometrical problem of embedding surfaces. When the spatial part of the background corresponds to a general WZW model for a compact group, the classical dynamics of the physical degrees of freedom is governed by the coset conformal field theory SO(D-1)/SO(D-2), which is universal irrespective of the particular WZW model. The same holds for string propagation on D-dimensional flat space. The integration of the corresponding Gauss-Codazzi equations requires the introduction of (non-Abelian) parafermions in differential geometry.