Hybrid Superstrings in NS-NS Plane Waves

TL;DR

This paper develops a manifestly supersymmetric description of superstrings in four-dimensional NS-NS plane waves using the hybrid formalism, revealing spectral properties and asymmetries between short and long strings.

Contribution

It introduces a topological N=4 string theory formulation of superstrings in NS-NS plane waves via a field redefinition of RNS fields, providing new insights into the spectrum.

Findings

Identification of boson-fermion asymmetry in the massless spectrum of short strings

Analysis of some massive short string spectra

Study of the massless spectrum of long strings

Abstract

By using the hybrid formalism, superstrings in four-dimensional NS-NS plane waves are studied in a manifest supersymmetric manner. This description of the superstring is obtained by a field redefinition of the RNS worldsheet fields and defined as a topological N=4 string theory. The Hilbert space consists of two types of representations describing short and long strings. We study the physical spectrum to find boson-fermion asymmetry in the massless spectrum of the short string. Some massive spectrum of the short string and the massless spectrum of the long string are also studied.