English

World-Sheet Supersymmetry Without Contact Terms

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-10-22 v1

Abstract

Green and Seiberg showed that, in simple treatments of fermionic string theory, it is necessary to introduce contact interactions when vertex operators collide. Otherwise, certain superconformal Ward identities would be violated. In this note, we show how these contact terms arise naturally when proper account is taken of the superconformal geometry involved when punctures collide. More precisely, we show that there is no contact term at all! Rather, corrections arise to the ``na\"\i ve" formula when the boundary of moduli space is described correctly.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/9203058,
  title  = {World-Sheet Supersymmetry Without Contact Terms},
  author = {J. Distler and M. Doyle},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9203058},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

14pp., 2 figures (included)

R2 v1 2026-07-22T15:42:38.285Z