Lecture 05 Mar

Today we explain the light-front gauge incarnation of kappa-symmetry, a local fermionic symmetry on the worldline/worldsheet, which permits construction of a manifestly supersymmetric action. We start by constructing the story for the superparticle. Then we move to the superstring. In particular, we explain how fixing the light-front gauge makes the Green-Schwarz superstring action quadratic (not quartic!) in fermions. From this, we show how the equations of motion produce the familiar Klein-Gordon equation on the worldsheet for the transverse coordinates and – this is the “magic” part – the Dirac equation for their [spacetime] superpartners. This is all done in flat spacetime (the classic prototype).