Cohomology in the pure spinor formalism for the superstring

By N. Berkovits. 2000

156 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A manifestly super-Poincare covariant formalism for the superstring has recently been constructed using a pure spinor variable. Unlike the covariant Green-Schwarz formalism, this new formalism is easily quantized with a BRST operator and tree-level scattering amplitudes have been evaluated in a manifestly covariant manner. In this paper, the cohomology of the BRST operator in the pure spinor formalism is shown to give the usual light-cone Green-Schwarz spectrum. Although the BRST operator does not directly involve the Virasoro constraint, this constraint emerges after expressing the pure spinor variable in terms of SO(8) variables.

Subfields: Applied Mathematics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c983b52f8f6435fd20bda8503a3f243a723e8311

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Applied Mathematics

1. S. Stieberger
2. O. Schlotterer
3. N. Berkovits
4. P. Howe

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. S. Stieberger
2. O. Schlotterer
3. Carlos R. Mafra
4. N. Berkovits
5. F. Cachazo
6. Song He
7. E. Y. Yuan
8. R. Monteiro

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

1. S. Stieberger
2. O. Schlotterer
3. N. Berkovits
4. Carlos R. Mafra
5. Song He
6. F. Cachazo
7. E. Y. Yuan
8. R. Monteiro

Citations in the corpus

• ICTP Lectures on Covariant Quantization of the Superstring (2002, background): “These include a proof that the cohomology of Q = R λ α d α reproduces the superstring spectrum [22] and the construction of an explicit map from states in the cohomology of Q to physical states in the RNS formalism [23].”
• Pure spinor formalism as an N=2 topological string (2005, methodology): “For massive states, the superspace description is more complicated [33], however, it has been proven by DDF methods that the cohomology of Q at ghost-number one correctly describes the open superstring spectrum [34].”
• Complete N-point superstring disk amplitude I. Pure spinor computation (2011, background): “In fact, it has recently been shown how the cohomology of pure spinor superspace [24,25] is enough to fix all N–point scattering amplitudes of D = 10 SYM [26,1].”