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Taming the b antighost with Ramond-Ramond flux

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Abstract

In the pure spinor formalism for the superstring, the b antighost is necessary for multiloop amplitude computations and is a composite operator constructed to satisfy {Q, b}= T where Q is the BRST operator and T is the holomorphic stress-tensor. In superstring backgrounds with only NS-NS fields turned on, or in flat space, one needs to introduce “non-minimal” variables in order to construct the b antighost. However, in Type II backgrounds where the Ramond-Ramond bispinor field-strength satisfies certain conditions, the b antighost can be constructed without the non-minimal variables. Although the b antighost in these backgrounds is not holomorphic, its antiholomorphic derivative is BRST-trivial. We discuss the properties of this operator both in the AdS 5×S 5 background and in a generic curved background.

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Correspondence to Luca Mazzucato.

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ArXiv ePrint: 1004.5140

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Berkovits, N., Mazzucato, L. Taming the b antighost with Ramond-Ramond flux. J. High Energ. Phys. 2010, 19 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP11(2010)019

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP11(2010)019

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