On the conformal anomaly of the Green-Schwarz heterotic string in curved N=1, D=10 superspace

Abstract

It is shown that the σ-model describing a Green-Schwarz heterotic string propagating in a curved N=1, D=10 superspace possesses a non-vanishing one loop world sheet conformal anomaly even when the background superfields satisfy their classical equations of motion. The anomaly is shown to disappear for a flat background superspace and for non-trivial bosonic background fields. We conjecture that the existence of this anomaly implies that it must cancel against an anomaly in the fermionic κ-symmetry (which must therefore exist) to preserve quantum consistency of the theory.