Open superstring field theory I: gauge fixing, ghost structure, and propagator

The WZW form of open superstring field theory has linearized gauge invariances associated with the BRST operator Q and the zero mode η [subscript 0] of the picture minus-one fermionic superconformal ghost. We discuss gauge fixing of the free theory in a simple class of gauges using the Faddeev-Popov...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kroyter, Michael, Okawa, Yuji, Schnabl, Martin, Torii, Shingo, Zwiebach, Barton
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Theoretical Physics
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Springer-Verlag 2013
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/80798
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6504-3210
Description
Summary:The WZW form of open superstring field theory has linearized gauge invariances associated with the BRST operator Q and the zero mode η [subscript 0] of the picture minus-one fermionic superconformal ghost. We discuss gauge fixing of the free theory in a simple class of gauges using the Faddeev-Popov method. We find that the world-sheet ghost number of ghost and antighost string fields ranges over all integers, except one, and at any fixed ghost number, only a finite number of picture numbers appear. We calculate the propagators in a variety of gauges and determine the field-antifield content and the free master action in the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism. Unlike the case of bosonic string field theory, the resulting master action is not simply related to the original gauge-invariant action by relaxing the constraint on the ghost and picture numbers.