Towards the underlying gauge theory of the pure spinor superstring

Abstract

Previous attempts to determine the worldsheet origin of the pure spinor formalism were not completely successful, but introduced important concepts that seem to be connected to its fundamental structure, e.g., emergent supersymmetry and the role of reparametrization symmetry. In this work, a new proposal towards the underlying gauge theory of the pure spinor superstring is presented, based on an extension of Berkovits' twistor-like constraint. The gauge algebra is analyzed in detail and worldsheet reparametrization is shown to be a redundant symmetry. The master action is built with a careful account of the intrinsic gauge symmetries associated with the pure spinor constraint and a consistent gauge fixing is performed. After a field redefinition, spacetime supersymmetry emerges and the resulting action describes the pure spinor superstring.