Past the Highest-Weight, and What You Can Find There

Abstract

The properties of highest-weight representations of the N=2 superconformal algebra in two dimensions can be considerably simplified when re-expressed in terms of relaxed ^sl(2) representations. This applies to the appearance of submodules and hence, of singular vectors, and to the structure of the embedding diagrams and the BGG-type resolution. I also discuss the realization of these representations in the bosonic string, where the generalized DDK prescription amounts to the requirement that the representations have a charged singular vector, and the role of the fermionic screening operator.