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Consistent Boundary Conditions for Open Strings

Ulf Lindstrom·Martin Rocek·Peter van Nieuwenhuizen
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Abstract

We study boundary conditions for the bosonic, spinning (NSR) and Green-Schwarz open string, as well as for 1+1 dimensional supergravity. We consider boundary conditions that arise from (1) extremizing the action, (2) BRST, rigid or local supersymmetry, or kappa(Siegel)-symmetry of the action, (3) closure of the set of boundary conditions under the symmetry transformations, and (4) the boundary limits of bulk Euler-Lagrange equations that are ``conjugate'' to other boundary conditions. We find corrections to Neumann boundary conditions in the presence of a bulk tachyon field. We discuss a boundary superspace formalism. We also find that path integral quantization of the open string requires an infinite tower of boundary conditions that can be interpreted as a smoothness condition on the doubled interval; we interpret this to mean that for a path-integral formulation of open strings with only Neumann boundary conditions, the description in terms of orientifolds is not just natural, but is actually fundamental.

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Ulf Lindstrom, Martin Rocek, Peter van Nieuwenhuizen. 2003-03-06. Consistent Boundary Conditions for Open Strings. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0550-3213(03)00262-1

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