Self-dual chiral boson: augmented superfield approach

Abstract

We exploit the standard tools and techniques of the augmented version of Bonora-Tonin (BT) superfield formalism to derive the off-shell nilpotent and absolutely anticommuting (anti-)BRST and (anti-)co-BRST symmetry transformations for the Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin (BRST) invariant Lagrangian density of a self-dual bosonic system. In the derivation of the full set of the above transformations, we invoke the (dual-)horizontality conditions, (anti-)BRST and (anti-)co-BRST invariant restrictions on the superfields that are defined on the (2, 2)-dimensional supermanifold. The latter is parameterized by the bosonic variable x^\mu\,(\mu = 0,\, 1) and a pair of Grassmanian variables \theta and \bar\theta (with \theta^2 = \bar\theta^2 = 0 and \theta\bar\theta + \bar\theta\theta = 0). The dynamics of this system is such that, instead of the full (2, 2) dimensional superspace coordinates (x^\mu, \theta, \bar\theta), we require only the specific (1, 2)-dimensional super-subspace variables (t, \theta, \bar\theta) for its description. This is a novel observation in the context of superfield approach to BRST formalism. The application of the dual-horizontality condition, in the derivation of a set of proper (anti-)co-BRST symmetries, is also one of the new ingredients of our present endeavor where we have exploited the augmented version of superfield formalism which is geometrically very intuitive.