Notes on the $D=11$ pure spinor superparticle

Abstract

The $D=11$ pure spinor superparticle has been shown to describe linearized $D=11$ supergravity in a manifestly covariant way. A number of authors have proposed that its correlation functions be used to compute amplitudes. The use of the scalar structure of the eleven-dimensional pure spinor top cohomology introduces a natural measure for computing such correlation functions. This prescription requires the construction of ghost number one and zero vertex operators. In these notes, we construct explicitly a ghost number one vertex operator but show the incompatibiliy of a ghost number zero vertex operator satisfying a standard descent equation for $D=11$ supergravity.