T-duality and spacetime supersymmetry

TL;DR

This paper investigates how T-duality affects spacetime supersymmetry, revealing that accounting for world-sheet effects resolves apparent supersymmetry breaking and proposing modifications to T-duality rules.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of supersymmetry breaking under T-duality, introduces modifications to Buscher's rules, and presents a mechanism to restore supersymmetry dynamically.

Findings

World-sheet effects resolve apparent supersymmetry puzzles.

Modified T-duality (Buscher's) rules are proposed.

A mechanism for dynamic supersymmetry restoration is presented.

Abstract

We analyze in detail the possible breaking of spacetime supersymmetry under T-duality transformations. We find that when appropiate world-sheet effects are taken into account apparent puzzles concerning supersymmetry in spacetime are solved. We study T-duality in general heterotic $\sigma$-models analyzing possible anomalies, and we find some modifications of Buscher's rules. We then work out a simple but representative example which contains most of the difficulties. We also consider the issue of supersymmetry versus duality for marginal deformations of WZW models and present a mechanism that restores supersymmetry dynamically in the effective theory.