Consistent Boundary Conditions for Open Strings

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.

Latex, 25 pages (references added) (journal version)

References in corpus (5)

• Cosmological Evolution of the Rolling Tachyon
• Open Strings
• Open strings and their symmetry groups
• Supersymmetric Born-Infeld from the Pure Spinor Formalism of the Open Superstring
• N=2 Boundary conditions for non-linear sigma models and Landau-Ginzburg models

Cited by in corpus (34)

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• Boundary conditions in the Mirabelli and Peskin model
• Tensor calculus for supergravity on a manifold with boundary
• The supermultiplet of boundary conditions in supergravity
• Gauge and Supersymmetry Invariance of N=2 Boundary Chern-Simons Theory
• Supersymmetric non-linear sigma-models with boundaries revisited
• Non(anti) commutativity for open superstrings
• Quantization of 2D dilaton supergravity with matter
• Supersymmetric Chern-Simons Theory in Presence of a Boundary in the Light-Like Direction
• On Supersymmetry, Boundary Actions and Brane Charges
• Boundary Effects in Super-Yang-Mills Theory
• T-duality for the sigma model with boundaries
• Supersymmetric Boundary Conditions for the N=2 Sigma Model
• A brief review of supersymmetric non-linear sigma models and generalized complex geometry
• Physics-to-gauge conversion at black hole horizons
• Fermionic anticommutators for open superstrings in the presence of antisymmetric tensor field
• Landau-Ginzburg Description of Boundary Critical Phenomena in Two Dimensions
• An N=2 worldsheet approach to D-branes in bihermitian geometries: II. The general case
• Boundary Terms in Supergravity and Supersymmetry
• The world-sheet description of A and B branes revisited
• Special holonomy sigma models with boundaries
• Normal ordering and boundary conditions for fermionic string coordinates
• McKay quivers and decomposition
• Special Holonomy and Two-Dimensional Supersymmetric Sigma-Models
• Inner brane: A D3-brane in the Nappi-Witten model from an inner group automorphism
• N = 2 world-sheet approach to D-branes on generalized Kaehler geometries: I. General formalism
• Higher Derivative Corrections to the Abelian Born-Infeld Action using Superspace Methods
• A and B branes from N=2 superspace