A search for exact superstring vacua

Abstract

We investigate $2d$ sigma-models with a $2+N$ dimensional Minkowski signature target space metric and Killing symmetry, specifically supersymmetrized, and see under which conditions they might lead to corresponding exact string vacua. It appears that the issue relies heavily on the properties of the vector $M_μ$, a reparametrization term, which needs to possess a definite form for the Weyl invariance to be satisfied. We give, in the $n = 1$ supersymmetric case, two non-renormalization theorems from which we can relate the $u$ component of $M_μ$ to the $β^G_{uu}$ function. We work out this $(u,u)$ component of the $β^G$ function and find a non-vanishing contribution at four loops. Therefore, it turns out that at order $α^{\prime 4}$, there are in general non-vanishing contributions to $M_u$ that prevent us from deducing superstring vacua in closed form.