Tools for Superstring Amplitudes

Abstract

In this thesis, we develop computational tools to calculate tree and one-loop superstring amplitudes. In particular, we provide a recursive method to construct kinematic factors of tree level open superstring amplitudes and present systematic tools to manifest the supersymmetric cancellations in n-boson-two-fermion amplitudes at the one-loop order of the RNS superstring. For tree level open superstring amplitudes, we present simplified recursions for multiparticle superfields, which can be applied to construct kinematic parts of open superstring amplitudes at tree level. We also discuss the gauge transformations which enforce their Lie symmetries as suggested by the Bern-Carrasco-Johansson duality between color and kinematics. Another gauge transformation due to Harnad and Shnider is shown to streamline the theta-expansion of multiparticle superfields, bypassing the need to use their recursion relations beyond the lowest components. The findings of this work greatly simplify the component extraction from kinematic factors in pure spinor superspace. We then investigate massless n-point one-loop amplitudes of the open RNS superstring with two external fermions and determine their world-sheet integrands. The contributing correlation functions involving spin-1/2 and spin-3/2 operators from the fermion vertices are evaluated to any multiplicity. Moreover, we introduce techniques to sum these correlators over the spin structures of the world-sheet fermions, such as to manifest all cancellations due to spacetime supersymmetry. These spin-summed correlators can be expressed in terms of doubly-periodic functions known from the mathematics literature on elliptic multiple zeta values. On the boundary of moduli space, our spin-summed correlators specialize to compact representations of fermionic one-loop integrands for ambitwistor strings.