arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Kasper Peeters.
We present the supersymmetrisation of the anomaly-related R^4 term in eleven dimensions and show that it induces no non-trivial modifications to the on-shell supertranslation algebra and the superspace torsion constraints before inclusion of gauge-field terms.
Index theorems for the Dirac operator allow one to study spinors on manifolds with boundary and torsion. We analyse the modifications of the boundary Chern-Simons correction and APS eta invariant in the presence of torsion. The bulk contribution must also be modified and is computed using a supersymmetric quantum mechanics representation. Here we find agreement with existing results which employed heat kernel and Pauli-Villars techniques. Nonetheless, this computation also provides a stringent check of the Feynman rules of de Boer et al. for the computation of quantum mechanical path integrals. Our results can be verified via a duality relation between manifolds admitting a Killing-Yano tensor and manifolds with torsion. As an explicit example, we compute the indices of Taub-NUT and its dual constructed using this method and find agreement for any finite radius to the boundary. We also suggest a resolution to the problematic appearance of the Nieh-Yan invariant multiplied by the regulator mass^2 in computations of the chiral gravitational anomaly coupled to torsion.
On manifolds with non-trivial Killing tensors admitting a square root of the Killing-Yano type one can construct non-standard Dirac operators which differ from, but commute with, the standard Dirac operator. We relate the index problem for the non-standard Dirac operator to that of the standard Dirac operator. This necessitates a study of manifolds with torsion and boundary and we summarize recent results obtained for such manifolds.
We construct the supermembrane action in an AdS_4 x S^7 and AdS_7 x S^4 background to all orders in anticommuting coordinates. The result is compared to and agrees completely with results obtained earlier for generic supergravity backgrounds through gauge completion at low orders in θ.
We construct part of the superspace vielbein and tensor gauge field in terms of the component fields of 11-dimensional on-shell supergravity. The result can be utilized to describe supermembranes and corresponding matrix models for Dirichlet particles in nontrivial supergravity backgrounds to second order in anticommuting coordinates. We exhibit the kappa-invariance of the corresponding supermembrane action, which at this order holds for unrestricted supergravity backgrounds, the supersymmetry covariance and the resulting surface terms in the action.
Motivated by manifest Lorentz symmetry and a well-defined large-N limit prescription, we study the supersymmetric quantum mechanics proposed as a model for the collective dynamics of D0-branes from the point of view of the 11-dimensional supermembrane. We argue that the continuity of the spectrum persists irrespective of the presence of winding around compact target-space directions and discuss the central charges in the superalgebra arising from winding membrane configurations. Along the way we comment on the structure of open supermembranes.
We study supermembranes in the light-cone gauge in eleven flat dimensions with compact directions. The membrane states are subject to only the central charges associated with closed two-branes, which, in this case, are generated by the winding itself. We present arguments why this winding leaves the mass spectrum continuous. The lower bound on the mass spectrum is set by the winding number and corresponds to a BPS state.