arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Jose M Figueroa-O'Farrill.
This is the written version of my talk at SUSY '98. It presents a geometric characterisation of the allowed near-horizon geometries of supersymmetric branes. We focus primarily on the M2-brane, but results for other branes (e.g., the D3-brane) are also presented. Some new examples are discussed.
In hep-th/9506151 we started a programme devoted to the systematic study of the conformal field theories derived from WZW models based on nonreductive Lie groups. In this, the second part, we continue this programme with a look at the N=1 and N=2 superconformal field theories which arise from both gauged and ungauged supersymmetric WZW models. We extend the supersymmetric (affine) Sugawara and coset constructions, as well as the N=2 Kazama--Suzuki construction to general self-dual Lie algebras.
We present a derivation of the N=1 and N=2 superconformal coset constructions starting from a supersymmetric WZW model where a diagonal subgroup has been gauged. We work in the general framework of self-dual (not necessarily reductive) Lie algebras; but even in the reductive case these results are new. We show that the BRST cohomology of the gauged supersymmetric WZW model contains the N=1 (and if it exists also the N=2) coset generators. We also extend the BRST analysis to show that the BRST cohomology of the supersymmetric WZW model agrees with that of an ordinary bosonic WZW model (in a representation twisted by the presence of the coset fermions). In particular, in the case of the topological G/G coset, the supersymmetric and nonsupersymmetric theories agree.