Worldsheet supersymmetry

Local supersymmetry on a string worldsheet relates embedding coordinates to their worldsheet Majorana fermion partners. Fixing this fermionic gauge symmetry introduces commuting superconformal ghosts.

The worldsheet gravitino is the fermionic vector-spinor gauge field for local worldsheet supersymmetry, paired with the worldsheet metric in two-dimensional supergravity. In a locally supersymmetric string action it couples to the worldsheet supercurrent. Fixing its gauge and the bosonic conformal gauge leaves the usual flat rigid transformations on embeddings and worldsheet Majorana fermions; it should not be silently omitted when claiming an arbitrary curved-worldsheet locally supersymmetric action.

In flat conformal gauge, take $\mathcal{L}=\partial X\cdot \partial X+i{\alpha }^{\prime }\bar{\psi }{\gamma }^{\mu }{\partial }_{\mu }\psi$ and rigid transformations $\delta X=iA\overline{ϵ}\psi$, $\delta \psi =B{\gamma }^{\nu }{\partial }_{\nu }Xϵ$, with $A={\alpha }^{\prime }B$. The Majorana Grassmann bilinear interchange and Clifford algebra combine the variations intoThe identity is off shell. The integrated action is invariant when its boundary flux vanishes, for example on a closed worldsheet or with compatible supersymmetric endpoint conditions. Constant spinors and ordinary derivatives here refer to flat gauge; arbitrary curved worldsheets require covariant spinor derivatives and the locally supersymmetric completion.

The commuting beta-gamma system produced by worldsheet supersymmetry gauge fixing has conformal weights $(3/2,-1/2)$ and central charge $11$ per chiral sector.

Each real chiral fermion has conformal weight $1/2$ and contributes $1/2$ to the central charge. The Ramond sector and Neveu–Schwarz sector differ by periodic versus antiperiodic boundary conditions.