Lie superalgebras of string theories

Abstract

We define and describe simple complex Lie superalgbras of vector fields on "supercircles" - simple stringy superalgebras. There are four series of such algebras and four exceptional stringy superalgebras. The 13 of the simple stringy Lie superalgebras are distinguished: only they have nontrivial central extensions; since two of the distinguish algebras have 3 nontrivial central extensions each, there are exactly 16 superizations of the Liouville action, Schroedinger equation, KdV hierarchy, etc. We also present the three nontrivial cocycles on the N=4 extended Neveu-Schwarz and Ramond superalgebras in terms of primary fields and describe the "classical" stringy superalgebras close to the simple ones. One of these stringy superalgebras is a Kac-Moody superalgebra G(A) with a nonsymmetrizable Cartan matrix A. Unlike the Kac-Moody superalgebras of polynomial growth with symmetrizable Cartan matrix, it can not be interpreted as a central extension of a twisted loop algebra.The stringy superalgebras are often referred to as superconformal ones. We discuss how superconformal stringy superalgebras really are.