Actions and symmetries of NSR superstrings and D-strings

TL;DR

This paper systematically derives NSR superstring and super-D-string actions with gauge invariance, characterizes their global symmetries, and constructs locally supersymmetric Born-Infeld actions in extended target spaces, revealing background isometries and extra-dimensional symmetries.

Contribution

It provides a complete classification of invariant superstring and super-D-string actions and introduces locally supersymmetric Born-Infeld actions with extra dimensions.

Findings

Superstring actions correspond to background isometries.

Super-D-string actions exhibit additional symmetries involving extra dimensions.

Explicit construction of locally supersymmetric Born-Infeld actions.

Abstract

We present all NSR superstring and super-D-string actions invariant under a set of prescribed gauge transformations, and characterize completely their global symmetries. In particular we obtain locally supersymmetric Born-Infeld actions on general backgrounds in a formulation with extra target space dimensions. The nontrivial global symmetries of the superstring actions correspond to isometries of the background, whereas super-D-string actions can have additional symmetries acting nontrivially also on the coordinates of the extra dimensions.