The superembedding origin of the Berkovits pure spinor covariant quantization of superstrings

2002/06/30 by Marco Matone, Luca Mazzucato, Ichiro Oda +2 · 3 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Algebraic and Geometric Analysis #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Covariant transformation #Formalism (music) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Pure spinor #Quantization (signal processing) #Spinor #Superstring theory #Worldsheet #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/s0550-3213(02)00562-x

published as Nucl.Phys.B639:182-202,2002 · LaTeX, 24 pages, references and comments added, typos corrected, version to appear in NPB

arxiv created 2002/07/19 · openalex publication_date 2002/09/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We show that the pure spinor formalism proposed by Berkovits to covariantly quantize superstrings is a gauge fixed, twisted version of the complexified n=2 superembedding formulation of the superstring. This provides the Berkovits approach with a geometrical superdiffeomorphism invariant ground. As a consequence, the absence of the worldsheet (super)diffeomorphism ghosts in the pure spinor quantization prescription and the nature of the Berkovits BRST charge and antighost are clarified. Since superembedding is classically equivalent to the Green-Schwarz formulation, we thus also relate the latter to the pure spinor construction.

Citations

• The heterotic Green-Schwarz superstring on an N = (2,0) super world-sheet
• Twistor-like formulation of super p-branes
• Twistor-like superstrings with D = 3, 4, 6 target superspace and N = (1, 0), (2, 0), (4, 0) world-sheet supersymmetry
• Topological quantum field theory
• Twistor formulation of the heteroticD=10superstring with manifest (8,0) world-sheet supersymmetry

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