Non-Abelian coset string backgrounds from asymptotic and initial data

We describe hierarchies of exact string backgrounds obtained as non-Abelian cosets of orthogonal groups and having a space-time realization in terms of gauged WZW models. For each member in these hierarchies, the target-space backgrounds are identified with the ``boundary'' backgrounds of the next member. We explicitly demonstrate that this property holds to all orders in α' for the three- and four-dimensional cosets, while the general structure of the backgrounds at hand suggests that the property holds in any dimension. The affiliation of the ``boundary'' theory to the ``bulk'' theory exhibits marginal operators, generically build on non-Abelian parafermion bilinears, dressed with a dilaton vertex operator. The dilaton is supported by the extra radial dimension, whose asymptotic value defines the boundary. Depending on the hierarchy, this boundary can be time-like or space-like with, in the latter case, potential cosmological applications.