Superstring Scattering Amplitudes with the Pure Spinor Formalism

TL;DR

This thesis demonstrates how the pure spinor formalism streamlines superstring scattering amplitude calculations, revealing new identities and computing previously unknown two-loop fermionic amplitudes, thereby advancing string theory computational methods.

Contribution

It introduces explicit relations among massless four-point amplitudes at various loops and computes the first two-loop fermionic amplitudes using the pure spinor formalism.

Findings

Derived explicit relations among tree-level and loop-level amplitudes.

Computed two-loop amplitudes involving fermionic states for the first time.

Confirmed equivalence of minimal and non-minimal formalisms at one- and two-loop levels.

Abstract

This thesis discusses how the pure spinor formalism can be used to efficiently compute superstring scattering amplitudes. We emphasize the pure spinor superspace form of the kinematic factors, where the simplifying features of this language have allowed an explicit relation among the massless four-point amplitudes at tree-level, one- and two-loops to be found. We show how these identities elegantly simplify the task of computing the amplitudes for all possible external state combination related by supersymmetry. In particular, the two-loop amplitudes involving fermionic states had never been computed before. By explicit calculation we show that the one- and two-loop amplitudes computed with the minimal and non-minimal formalisms are equivalent. Furthermore we compute the gauge variation of the massless six-point open string amplitude and obtain the kinematic factor related to the anomaly cancellation. We also discuss some preliminary results regarding the massless five-point amplitude at one-loop.