A unifying topological action for heterotic and type II superstring theories

1996/06/13 by Laurent Baulieu, Michael Green, Michael B. Green +1 · 1 citation
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Anomaly (physics) #Biology #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Combinatorics #Green–Schwarz mechanism #Heterotic string theory #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Superstring theory #Supersymmetry #Theoretical physics #Topology (electrical circuits) #Type (biology) #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/0370-2693(96)00909-4

published as Phys.Lett. B386 (1996) 91-98 · 14 pages, LaTeX, no figures

arxiv created 1996/06/13 · openalex publication_date 1996/10/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The heterotic and type II superstring actions are identified in different anomaly-free decompositions of a single topological sigma-model action depending on bosonic and fermionic coordinates, X^μ and \r^A respectively, and of their topological ghosts. This model results from gauge-fixing the topological gauge symmetry δX^μ= ε^μ(z, z) (μ=1,2,…, 10) and δ\r^α= ε^α(z, z). (α=1,2.…, 16). From another viewpoint the heterotic and type II superstring actions emerge as two different gauge-fixings of the same closed two-form. Comments are also made concerning the possibility of relating ρ^α to a Majorana-Weyl space-time spinor superpartner of X^μ.

Citations

• Mirror Manifolds And Topological Field Theory
• A new supersymmetric index
• Topological sigma models
• Singular vectors and topological theories from Virasoro constraints via the Kontsevich-Miwa transform

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