On Euclidean spinors and Wick rotations

We propose a continuous Wick rotation for Dirac, Majorana and Weyl spinors from Minkowski spacetime to Euclidean space which treats fermions on the same footing as bosons. The result is a recipe to construct a supersymmetric Euclidean theory from any supersymmetric Minkowski theory. This Wick rotation is identified as a complex Lorentz boost in a five-dimensional space and acts uniformly on bosons and fermions. For Majorana and Weyl spinors our approach is reminiscent of the traditional Osterwalder Schrader approach in which spinors are ``doubled'' but the action is not hermitean. However, for Dirac spinors our work provides a link to the work of Schwinger and Zumino in which hermiticity is maintained but spinors are not doubled. Our work differs from recent work by Mehta since we introduce no external metric and transform only the basic fields.Comment: 19 pages, LaTe

Simple d=4 supergravity with a boundary

To construct rigidly or locally supersymmetric bulk-plus-boundary actions, one needs an extension of the usual tensor calculus. Its key ingredients are the extended (F-, D-, etc.) density formulas and the rule for the decomposition of bulk multiplets into (co-dimension one) boundary multiplets. Working out these ingredients for d=4 N=1 Poincar\'e supergravity, we discover the special role played by R-symmetry (absent in the d=3 N=1 case we studied previously). The $U(1)_A$ R-symmetry has to be gauged which leads us to extend the old-minimal set of auxiliary fields S, P, A_\mu by a $U(1)_A$ compensator $a$. Our results include the ``F+A'' density formula, the ``Q+L+A'' formula for the induced supersymmetry transformations (closing into the standard d=3 N=1 algebra) and demonstration that the compensator $a$ is the first component of the extrinsic curvature multiplet. We rely on the superconformal approach which allows us to perform, in parallel, the same analysis for new-minimal supergravity.Comment: 26 pages. JHEP forma

A continuous Wick rotation for spinor fields and supersymmetry in Euclidean space

We obtain a continuous Wick rotation for Dirac, Majorana and Weyl spinors $\psi \to \exp ({1\over 2} \theta \gamma^4 \gamma^5)\psi$ which interpolates between Minkowski and Euclidean field theories.Comment: Proceedings of the String conference held at Imperial College, London, July 1996. 9 pages, Late

Trace and chiral anomalies in string and ordinary field theory from Feynman diagrams for nonlinear sigma models

We write general one-loop anomalies of string field theory as path integrals on a torus for the corresponding nonlinear sigma model. This extends the work of Alvarez-Gaum\'e and Witten from quantum mechanics to two dimensions. Higher world-volume loops contribute in general to nontopological anomalies and a formalism to compute these is developed. We claim that (i) for general anomalies one should not use the propagator widely used in string theory but rather the one obtained by generalization from quantum mechanics, but (ii) for chiral anomalies both propagators give the same result. As a check of this claim in a simpler model we compute trace anomalies in quantum mechanics. The propagator with a center-of-mass zero mode indeed does not give the correct result for the trace anomaly while the propagator for fluctuations $q^i (\tau)$ satisfying $q^i (\tau = -1) = q^i (\tau = 0) = 0$ yields in $d=2$ and $d=4$ dimensions the correct results from two- and three-loop graphs. We then return to heterotic string theory and calculate the contributions to the anomaly from the different spin structures for $d=2$. We obtain agreement with the work of Pilch, Schellekens and Warner and that of Li in the sector with spacetime fermions. In the other sectors, where no explicit computations have been performed in the past and for which one needs higher loops, we find a genuine divergence, whose interpretation is unclear to us. We discuss whether or not this leads to a new anomaly.Comment: Latex, 32 pages, 4 fi

On the nature of the anomalies in the supersymmetric kink

We discuss the possibility to absorb all anomalies in the supersymmetry algebra of the N=(1,1) Wess-Zumino model in d=1+1 by a local counter term. This counter term corresponds to the change of the vacuum parameter $v_0^2$ in the model and the transition to an unconventional but admissible renormalization scheme. It does not modify the physical consequences such as BPS saturation, and thus the situation is rather different from gauge theory where local counter terms are required to absorb spurious gauge anomalies.Comment: 10 pages, LATe