Complete N-point superstring disk amplitude I. Pure spinor computation

Abstract

In this paper the pure spinor formalism is used to obtain a compact expression for the superstring N-point disk amplitude. The color-ordered string amplitude is given by a sum over (N−3)! super-Yang–Mills subamplitudes multiplied by multiple Gaussian hypergeometric functions. In order to obtain this result, the cohomology structure of the pure spinor superspace is exploited to generalize the Berends–Giele method of computing super-Yang–Mills amplitudes. The method was briefly presented in Mafra et al. (2011) [1], and this paper elaborates on the details and contains higher-rank examples of building blocks and associated cohomology objects. But the main achievement of this work is to identify these field-theory structures in the pure spinor computation of the superstring amplitude. In particular, the associated set of basis worldsheet integrals is constructively obtained here and thoroughly investigated together with the structure and properties of the amplitude in Mafra et al. (2011) [2], arXiv:1106.2646 [hep-th].