The supermembrane revisited

The M2-brane is studied from the perspective of superembeddings. We review the derivation of the M2-brane dynamics and the supergravity constraints from the standard superembedding constraint and we discuss explicitly the induced d=3, N=8 superconformal geometry on the worldvolume. We show that the gauged supermembrane, for a target space with a U(1) isometry, is the standard D2-brane in a type IIA supergravity background. In particular, the D2-brane action, complete with the Dirac-Born-Infeld term, arises from the gauged Wess-Zumino worldvolume 4-form via the brane action principle. The discussion is extended to the massive D2-brane considered as a gauged supermembrane in a massive D=11 superspace background. Type IIA supergeometry is derived using Kaluza-Klein techniques in superspace.Comment: Latex, 46 pages, clarifying remarks and references adde

(Super)twistors and (super)strings

The Lagrangian formulation of the D=4 bosonic string and superstring in terms of the (super)twistors is considered. The (super)twistor form of the equations of motion is derived and the kappa-symmetry transformation for the supertwistors is given. It is shown that the covariant kappa-symmetry gauge fixation results in the action quadratic in the (super)twistor variables.Comment: LaTeX, 17 page

Characters of the Positive Energy UIRs of D=4 Conformal Supersymmetry

We give character formulae for the positive energy unitary irreducible representations of the N-extended D=4 conformal superalgebras su(2,2/N). Using these we also derive decompositions of long superfields as they descend to the unitarity threshold. These results are also applicable to irreps of the complex Lie superalgebras sl(4/N). Our derivations use results from the representation theory of su(2,2/N) developed already in the 80s.Comment: 81 pages, input files: harvmac, amssym.def, amssym.tex; corrected presentation on odd reflection