The effective interactions of chiral families in four-dimensional superstrings

Abstract

The low-energy effective interactions in four-dimensional superstrings with N = 2 and N = 1 space-time supersymmetry and massless twisted (family) sector are obtained. Our results rely on some general symmetry properties of superstring particle states and on tensor-calculus techniques for supergravity couplings. The novel feature is that the N = 2 quaternionic manifold and N = 1 Kähler space of the scalar superpartners of family multiplets are non-symmetric spaces whose structure can be obtained by “integrating out” the massive superstring modes.