Superstrings in type IIB R-R plane-wave in semi-light-cone gauge and conformal invariance

TL;DR

This paper revisits the analysis of superstrings in a type IIB R-R plane-wave background, emphasizing the importance of phase space normal ordering in defining the energy-momentum tensor and extracting the correct physical spectrum.

Contribution

It clarifies the role of phase space normal ordering in the quantum analysis of superstrings in plane-wave backgrounds, resolving ambiguities in the Virasoro anomaly and effective equations of motion.

Findings

PNO is crucial for correct spectrum reproduction.

Field redefinition can be identity under PNO for simple backgrounds.

Proper anomaly regularization fixes ambiguities in equations of motion.

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.