Chiral differential operators on supermanifolds

Abstract

The first part of this paper provides a new description of chiral differential operators (CDOs) in terms of global geometric quantities. The main result is a recipe to define all sheaves of CDOs on a smooth cs-manifold; its ingredients consist of an affine connection ∇ and an even 3-form that trivializes p1(∇). With ∇ fixed, two suitable 3-forms define isomorphic sheaves of CDOs if and only if their difference is exact. Moreover, conformal structures are in one-to-one correspondence with even 1-forms that trivialize c1(∇). Applying our work in the first part, we then construct what may be called “chiral Dolbeault complexes” of a complex manifold M, and analyze conditions under which these differential vertex superalgebras admit compatible conformal structures or extra gradings (by fermion numbers). When M is compact, their cohomology computes (in various cases) the Witten genus, the two-variable elliptic genus and a spinc version of the Witten genus. This part contains some new results as well as provides a geometric formulation of certain known facts from the study of holomorphic CDOs and σ-models.