A New Approach to the Green-Schwarz Superstring

TL;DR

This paper develops a covariant multiloop superstring amplitude framework for the Green-Schwarz superstring by replacing bosonic superfields with fermionic ones, ensuring manifest spacetime supersymmetry, unitarity, and finiteness.

Contribution

It introduces a novel formulation of the Green-Schwarz superstring using fermionic scalar superfields, enabling covariant multiloop amplitude calculations with manifest supersymmetry.

Findings

Superstring scattering amplitudes are SO(9,1) super-Poincaré invariant.

Amplitudes are shown to be unitary and agree with light-cone gauge results.

The multiloop amplitudes are finite with no ambiguities due to manifest supersymmetry.

Abstract

By replacing two of the bosonic scalar superfields of the N=2 string with fermionic scalar superfields (which shifts $d_{critical}$ from (2,2) to (9,1)), a quadratic action for the ten-dimensional Green-Schwarz superstring is obtained. Using the usual N=2 super-Virasoro ghosts, one can construct a BRST operator, picture-changing operators, and covariant vertex operators for the Green-Schwarz superstring. Superstring scattering amplitudes with an arbitrary number of loops and external massless states are then calculated by evaluating correlation functions of these vertex operators on N=2 super-Riemann surfaces, and integrating over the N=2 super-moduli. These multiloop superstring amplitudes have been proven to be SO(9,1) super-Poincar\'e invariant (by constructing the super-Poincar\'e generators and writing the amplitudes in manifest SO(9,1) notation), unitary (by showing agreement with amplitudes obtained using the light-cone gauge Green-Schwarz formalism), and finite (by explicitly checking for divergences in the amplitudes when the Riemann surface degenerates). There is no multiloop ambiguity in these Green-Schwarz scattering amplitudes since spacetime-supersymmetry is manifest (there is no sum over spin structures), and therefore the moduli space can be compactified.