Notes On Holomorphic String And Superstring Theory Measures Of Low Genus

TL;DR

This paper discusses how to determine low-genus vacuum amplitudes for bosonic and superstring theories using holomorphicity, providing new insights especially for genus 2 superstrings through a unified approach.

Contribution

It introduces a unified method to compute genus 1 and 2 vacuum amplitudes for bosonic and superstrings based on holomorphy, with novel analysis for genus 2 superstrings.

Findings

Holomorphicity determines low-genus amplitudes.

Unified approach for genus 1 and 2.

New understanding of genus 2 superstring results.

Abstract

It has long been known that in principle, the genus g vacuum amplitude for bosonic strings or superstrings in 26 or 10 dimensions can be entirely determined from conditions of holomorphy. Moreover, this has been done in practice for bosonic strings of low genus. Here we describe in a unified way how to determine the bosonic string and superstring vacuum amplitude in genus 1 and 2 via holomorphy. The main novelty is the superstring analysis in genus 2, where we use holomorphy to get a new understanding of some of the results that previously have been obtained by more explicit calculations.