No Arabic abstract
We reconsider the analysis done by Kazama and Yokoi in arXiv:0801.1561 (hep-th). We find that although the right vacuum of the theory is the one associated to massless normal ordering (MNO), phase space normal ordering (PNO) plays crucial role in the analysis in the following way. While defining the quantum energy-momentum (EM) tensor one needs to take into account the field redefinition relating the space-time field and the corresponding world-sheet coupling. We argue that for a simple off-shell ansatz for the background this field redefinition can be taken to be identity if the interaction term is ordered according to PNO. This definition reproduces the correct physical spectrum when the background is on-shell. We further show that the right way to extract the effective equation of motion from the Virasoro anomaly is to first order the anomaly terms according to PNO at a finite regularization parameter $eps$ and then take the $eps to 0$ limit. This prescription fixes an ambiguity in taking the limit for certain bosonic and fermionic contributions to the Virasoro anomaly and is the natural one to consider given the above definition of the EM tensor.
In a previous work (arXiv:0902.3750 [hep-th]) we studied the world-sheet conformal invariance for superstrings in type IIB R-R plane-wave in semi-light-cone gauge. Here we give further justification to the results found in that work through alternative arguments using dynamical supersymmetries. We show that by using the susy algebra the same quantum definition of the energy-momentum (EM) tensor can be derived. Furthermore, using certain Jacobi identities we indirectly compute the Virasoro anomaly terms by calculating second order susy variation of the EM tensor. Certain integrated form of all such terms are shown to vanish. In order to deal with various divergences that appear in such computations we take a point-split definition of the same EM tensor. The final results are shown not to suffer from the ordering ambiguity as noticed in the previous work provided the coincidence limit is taken before sending the regularization parameter to zero at the end of the computation.
We consider random superstrings of type IIB in $d$-dimensional space. The discretized action is constructed from the supersymetric matrix model, which has been proposed as a constructive definition of superstring theory. Our action is invariant under the local N=2 super transformations, and doesnt have any redundant fermionic degrees of freedom.
In this article we present a comprehensive account of the operator formulation of the Green-Schwarz superstring in the semi-light-cone (SLC) gauge, where the worldsheet conformal invariance is preserved. Starting from the basic action, we systematically study the symmetry structure of the theory in the SLC gauge both in the Lagrangian and the phase space formulations. After quantizing the theory in the latter formulation we construct the quantum Virasoro and the super-Poincare generators and clarify the closure properties of these symmetry algebras. Then by making full use of this knowledge we will be able to construct the BRST-invariant vertex operators which describe the emission and the absorption of the massless quanta and show that they form the appropriate representation of the quantum symmetry algebras. Furthermore, we will construct an exact quantum similarity transformation which connects the SLC gauge and the familiar light-cone (LC) gauge. As an application BRST-invariant DDF operators in the SLC gauge are obtained starting from the corresponding physical oscillators in the LC gauge.
In Lagrangian gauge systems, the vector space of global reducibility parameters forms a module under the Lie algebra of symmetries of the action. Since the classification of global reducibility parameters is generically easier than the classification of symmetries of the action, this fact can be used to constrain the latter when knowing the former. We apply this strategy and its generalization for the non-Lagrangian setting to the problem of conformal symmetry of various free higher spin gauge fields. This scheme allows one to show that, in terms of potentials, massless higher spin gauge fields in Minkowski space and partially-massless fields in (A)dS space are not conformal for spin strictly greater than one, while in terms of curvatures, maximal-depth partially-massless fields in four dimensions are also not conformal, unlike the closely related, but less constrained, maximal-depth Fradkin--Tseytlin fields.
Light-cone gauge NSR string theory in noncritical dimensions should correspond to a string theory with a nonstandard longitudinal part. Supersymmetrizing the bosonic case [arXiv:0909.4675], we formulate a superconformal worldsheet theory for the longitudinal variables X^{pm}, psi^{pm}. We show that with the transverse variables and the ghosts combined, it is possible to construct a nilpotent BRST charge.