Spin structure

A spin structure is a consistent choice of lifting oriented orthonormal frame changes to their spin double cover, permitting globally defined spinor fields. For a spatial circle in a worldsheet, the two choices give periodic and antiperiodic fermions, hence the Ramond sector and Neveu–Schwarz sector. Local field equations do not choose the global spin structure.

A Spin-c structure on an oriented rank-$n$ real vector bundle is a lift of its oriented frame bundle to ${\mathrm{Spin}}^c(n)=(\mathrm{Spin}(n)\times U(1))/\{(1,1),(-1,-1)\}$. Its determinant line bundle is associated with $[s,z]\mapsto z^2$; its First Chern class reduces modulo two to the second Stiefel–Whitney class. When such structures exist, their isomorphism classes form an affine space over $H^2$; tensoring by a complex line bundle of first Chern class $h$ changes the determinant class by $2h$. On a closed oriented three-manifold they always exist. On a four-manifold, the determinant class is characteristic: $⟨c_1(\mathfrak{s}),v⟩\equiv v\cdot v(\mathrm{mod}2)$.