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# Quantum self-consistency of 𝐴𝑑𝑆×Σ brane models.

## I Introduction

An original way to address the gauge hierarchy problem has been suggested by Randall and Sundrum, by considering five dimensional anti de Sitter spacetime compactified on $`S^1/Z_2`$ and two $`3`$branes located at the orbifold fixed points . This set-up results in a non factorisable geometry, which has the virtue of resolving the large ratio between the Planck and electroweak scales as a geometrical effect: in the four dimensional effective theory the masses on the negative tension brane are redshifted by a factor $`a=e^{kr\pi }`$ ($`1/k`$ is the curvature of anti de Sitter spacetime and $`r`$ is the radius of the orbifold). Hence, it is possible to generate a TeV mass scale from a Planck sized mass by taking $`kr12`$.

Obviously, to make this scenario consistent, the size of the orbifold has to be determined dynamically and not fixed by hand. In this sense, the RS model does not completely solve the hierarchy problem, unless a stabilisation mechanism for the size of the fifth dimension is included. (It is worth noting that this is not a peculiarity of the RS model, rather a well known feature of higher dimensional theories with extra dimensions.)

Within the RS proposal, a way of achieving such a stabilisation was initially suggested by Goldberger and Wise, introducing an appropriate classical interaction between the branes and a bulk scalar field . In this way, it is possible to stabilise the extra fifth dimension without fine tuning, however, the lack of a fundamental origin for such interaction renders such a mechanism artificial.

An alternative to the GW mechanism can, in principle, be the Casimir energy generated by quantum fields. Already in the old Kaluza-Klein theories, Candelas and Weinberg looked at this possibility , and, inspired by their work, several authors investigated the role of quantum effects in the new brane models . In particular, as a result of such studies, it has recently been realized  that the quantum effective potential due to bulk gauge fields can stabilise the radion and generate the hierarchy of scales without fine tuning. This provides a viable alternative to the GW mechanism in the RS model. Further aspects of quantum effects have been investigated in .

The brane world idea has opened up a range of interesting possibilities in addressing many long standing problems of particle physics and cosmology. As one of the prototypes, the RS scenario can be viewed as a model belonging to a larger class and especially in connection with a possible embedding of such scenarios within string theory, it is worth exploring at more depth extensions of the RS model by considering spacetimes with higher dimensionalities and curved internal spaces (Explicit six dimensional examples can be found in .). Needless to say, such extensions provide models with a richer structure than the RS one (See ).

Many generalisations of the Randall-Sundrum model fall in the quite general class of higher dimensional warped solutions studied in , where a $`D`$dimensional system of gravity plus Yang-Mills is considered. The base spacetime is described by the following line element:

$$d\widehat{s}^2=e^{2\sigma (y)}\eta _{\mu \nu }dx^\mu dx^\nu +e^{2\rho (y)}g_{ij}^\mathrm{\Sigma }dX^idX^j+dy^2,$$
(1)
where the coordinates $`x^\mu `$ parametrise $`D_1`$ dimensional Minkowski space $``$, the coordinates $`X^i`$ cover a $`D_2`$dimensional compact internal manifold $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ of radius $`R`$ and the coordinate $`y[\pi r,\pi r]`$ parametrises the orbifold. We define $`D=D_1+D_2+1`$ and take $`D_1=4`$. Hatted quantities refer to higher dimensional ones.

Depending on the geometry of the internal space, Einstein equations lead to different types of warp factors $`\sigma (y)`$ and $`\rho (y)`$: when the internal space is a Ricci flat manifold and the Yang-Mills flux is switched off, the general result for the warp factors is given by a combination of exponentials. Simpler solutions with

$$\sigma (y)=\rho (y)=k|y|,$$
(2)
are found when the bulk cosmological constant is taken to be negative. Additionally, the condition of Ricci flatness of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ can be relaxed at the price of introducing some extra bulk matter, like, for instance, a scalar field with hedgehog configuration . In the above cited papers, the set-up allows for the presence of one brane only; two brane models can be constructed by gluing two slices of the previous spacetime and imposing the $`Z_2`$identification.

Solutions of the type $`AdS_{D_1+1}\times \mathrm{\Sigma }`$ are, instead, found when the internal space is non Ricci flat without adding any extra bulk matter. In such case the warp factor along $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is constant and we can take

$$\rho (y)=0,\sigma (y)=k|y|.$$
(3)
We note that in such case the requirement of a negative higher dimensional cosmological constant can be relaxed.

In a previous paper , we have considered scenarios of the type (1), (2) and evaluated the effective potential arising from massive, non-minimally coupled scalar fields. We showed that one-loop effects generate a suitable effective potential which can stabilise the hierarchy without fine tuning, provided that the internal space is flat. Aside, we have also seen that considering a warped internal manifold was providing a novel way to solve the hierarchy, which was relying on a mixture of large volume and redshift effects.

Here, we wish to extend the previous results to the second type of spacetimes (1), (3)In passing, it is worth noting that this type of metrics arise in string theory. Here we won’t be concerned with any string theory application, and simply refer the reader to references , where this type of solutions are found in the more fundamental context of supergravity or M-theory..

The plan of the paper is the following. In the next section we briefly discuss the model and comment on the relevant mass scales of our set-up. Section III is devoted to compute the quantum effective potential arising from a quantised bulk scalar and gauge field. The possibility of stabilising the hierarchy by using quantum effects is discussed in section IV, where the problem of the quantum self-consistency of the solution is also addressed. In the last section we report our conclusions. Some results concerning the uniform asymptotic expansion of the Bessel functions (needed in the computation of the effective potential) are collected in appendix.

## II Background solution and scales

In the present section we describe the background solution when branes are included and discuss the relevant scales of the problem.

The spacetime we consider corresponds to the line element (1) where the warpings satisfy the condition (3). In other words, the bulk spacetime we consider is the direct product of five dimensional anti de Sitter space and a compact one-parameter manifold $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.

Randjbar-Daemi and Shaposhnikov have considered this type of solutions and showed that they arise from a system of gravity plus Yang-Mills fields , with bulk action given by

$$S_{BG}=d^Dx\sqrt{\widehat{g}}\left\{\widehat{M}^{D2}\widehat{}\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\frac{1}{4\widehat{g}_{}^2}\widehat{}_{IJ}\widehat{}^{IJ}\right\}.$$
(4)
The equations of motion can be obtained in the standard way, and once the ansatz for the metric tensor (1), (3) is used, the following independent equations are obtained:

$$k^2=\frac{\widehat{M}^{2D}\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}}{D_1(D2)}+\frac{\widehat{M}^{2D}}{D_1(D2)}\frac{\widehat{F}^2}{4\widehat{g}_{}^2R^4},$$
(5)
$$\frac{\mathrm{\Omega }}{R^2}=\frac{\widehat{M}^{2D}}{D2}\left\{\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}+\frac{2DD_24}{D_2}\frac{\widehat{F}^2}{4\widehat{g}_{}^2R^4}\right\},$$
(6)
where we have expressed the curvature $`_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ of the internal manifold in terms of its radius $`R`$ ($`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a constant):

$$_\mathrm{\Sigma }=\frac{D_2\mathrm{\Omega }}{R^2},$$

and

$$\frac{\widehat{F}^2}{R^4}=\widehat{g}^{IM}\widehat{g}^{JN}\widehat{}_{IJ}\widehat{}_{MN}.$$

The previous equations (5), (6) allow us to determine the radius of the internal manifold and the Yang-Mills flux in terms of $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}`$, $`\widehat{M}`$ and $`k`$:

$`R^2`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Omega }D_2𝒫^2,`$ (7)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{F}^2}{4\widehat{g}_{}^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`D_2^2\mathrm{\Omega }^2𝒫^4(\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}+D_1(D2)k^2\widehat{M}^{D2}),`$ (8)
where, for notational convenience, we have defined

$$𝒫^2=2\widehat{M}^{2D}\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}+D_1(2DD_24)(D2)k^2.$$

One immediately notices that the radius of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is ‘stabilised’ at classical level at the price of tuning the Yang-Mills flux according to (8). In this sense we point out some analogy with the recent work of Carroll and Guica , who considered the direct product of Minkowski space and a 2-sphere. In their case the radius of the 2-sphere is stabilised by the flux and a relaxing the tuning of such flux would induce a de Sitter or anti-de Sitter geometry rather than Minkowski. The same is also true in our case with the additional modification of the warp factor.

Since we are considering two branes embedded in such a spacetime, we have to add to the action appropriate brane tension terms. It is easy to see that there are no solutions of the type considered here, if the tension term is isotropic. The requirement of conservation of the higher dimensional energy-momentum tensor along with the junction conditions forces us to introduce such anisotropy§§§The source for such anisotropy can be due to different contributions to the vacuum energy or also due to a background three-form field . .

The brane energy-momentum tensor is then given by:

$`T_\mu ^\nu `$ $`=`$ $`\delta (y)\text{diag}(\tau _{}^{}\delta _\mu ^\nu ,\tau _{}^\mathrm{\Sigma }\delta _i^j)+`$ (9)
$`+`$ $`\delta (y\pi r)\text{diag}(\tau _+^{}\delta _\mu ^\nu ,\tau _+^\mathrm{\Sigma }\delta _i^j).`$ (10)
The spacetime we are considering can then be constructed by gluing two copies of a slice of the bulk space and imposing the $`Z_2`$identification. The Israel junction conditions fix the brane tensions to be

$$\tau _\pm ^{}=\frac{D_11}{D_1}\tau _\pm ^\mathrm{\Sigma }=\frac{D_11}{D_1}\left(4D_1k\widehat{M}^{D2}\right).$$
(11)
We can now look at the physical scales to see whether such class of models suggests anything about the gauge hierarchy problem.

By integrating out the extra dimensions we can write a relation between the four- and higher-dimensional Planck scales

$$m_P^2=\frac{v_\mathrm{\Sigma }}{D_12}(\widehat{M}R)^{D_2}\frac{\widehat{M}}{k}\widehat{M}^{D_12},$$
(12)
where

$$v_\mathrm{\Sigma }R^{D_2}=_\mathrm{\Sigma }\sqrt{g^\mathrm{\Sigma }}d^{D_2}X$$

and the EW/Planck hierarchy can then be written, for $`D_1=4`$, as

$$h^2a^2\frac{\widehat{M}^2}{m_P^2}\frac{a^2}{(R\widehat{M})^{D_2}}\frac{k}{\widehat{M}}10^{32}.$$
(13)
We see that, analogously to , the hierarchy $`h`$ is expressed in terms of $`a`$ and $`R`$, however in the present case it is not possible to use both the redshift and large volume effects as in our previous work . To see this, we remind that in the case of equal warpings the crucial ingredient was that the internal manifold was growing exponentially away from the negative tension brane located at $`y=y_{}`$ and this was diluting gravity as in models with large extra dimension. On the other hand, gauge interactions, confined on the negative tension brane, were not diluted because the size of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ at $`y=y_{}`$ was of order of the fundamental cut-off.

Here the situation is different as we are considering the direct product $`AdS\times \mathrm{\Sigma }`$. In such case, the size, $`R`$, of the internal manifold has to be everywhere small, if we require that the extra $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$dimensions remain invisible to ordinary matter. Since $`R`$ is determined at classical level, Einstein equations leave us with a first ‘consistency’ check on such class of models if we were going to construct any (pseudo-)realistic scenario.

If we express the cosmological constant by factoring out two powers of the mass,

$$\widehat{\mathrm{\Lambda }}\lambda ^2\widehat{M}^{D2},$$
(14)
relations (7), (8) can be recast in the following form:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{F}^2}{4\widehat{g}_{}^2}}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{M}^{D2}}{(k^2+\lambda ^2)}},`$ (15)
$`R^2`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k^2+\lambda ^2}}.`$ (16)
Now, a natural assumption is that the bulk cosmological constant is of the same order as the higher dimensional Planck scale, $`\lambda \widehat{M}`$, and $`k`$ smaller than $`\widehat{M}`$, implying

$$R\widehat{M}^1,$$
(17)
meaning that the size of the internal manifold is of order of the cut-off and thus satisfying the requirement of small $`R`$. The previous relation also implies that

$$(kR)^2\frac{k^2}{\lambda ^2+k^2}<<1.$$
(18)
This last condition will be tacitly used in the subsequent computation of the effective potential.

From the gauge hierarchy point of view, this class of models does not suggest any improvement with respect to the RS model. As one can see from (13) and (17), the hierarchy is resolved only through redshift effects. Obviously, one could relax the condition $`\lambda \widehat{M}`$, but this in turn would interchange the gauge hierarchy problem with the need for an ‘ad hoc’ tuning of the bulk cosmological constant, as we would have to justify a value of $`\lambda `$ different from its natural value $`\widehat{M}`$.

## III Quantised fields

As we pointed out in our previous paper, quantum effects in scenarios with more than one extra dimension can be qualitatively different from models without internal spaces and can, in principle, provide new ways of addressing the hierarchy. It then seems reasonable to ask the same question in relation to the class of models described previously.

Therefore we devote this section to the computation of the one-loop effective potential arising from a massive bulk scalar field $`\mathrm{\Phi }(x,X,y)`$ coupled non-minimally to the higher dimensional curvature. We also point out that, as noted in , it is possible to relate the effective potential from a bulk scalar with the one arising from a gauge field, the computation being virtually the same. It is possible to do so by appropriately fixing the non-minimal coupling and the bulk mass of the scalar field to (we take $`D_1=4`$ and work in the physical gauge)

$`\xi `$ $`=`$ $`1/8,`$ (19)
$`m^2`$ $`=`$ $`k^2/2.`$ (20)
The field equation for $`\mathrm{\Phi }(x,X,y)`$ is given by the Klein-Gordon equation

$$\left[\mathrm{}_D+m^2+\xi \widehat{}\right]\mathrm{\Phi }=0,$$
(21)
where $`\widehat{}`$ is the higher dimensional curvature and $`\mathrm{}_D`$ the D’Alembertian, both computed from the metric (1), (3).

Standard Kaluza-Klein theory tells us that such a higher dimensional field can be expressed in terms of a complete set of modes, which describe a tower of fields with masses quantised according to some eigenvalue problem. Such a decomposition is, of course, arbitrary, however a convenient choice is

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(x,X,y)=\underset{l,n}{}\mathrm{\Psi }_l(X)\phi _{l,n}(x)Z_{l,n}(y),$$
(22)
where the modes $`\mathrm{\Psi }_l(X)`$ are chosen to be a complete set of solutions of the Klein-Gordon equation on the manifold $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$:

$`P_\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Psi }_l(X)`$ $`=`$ $`\left[\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{\Sigma }+\xi _\mathrm{\Sigma }\right]\mathrm{\Psi }_l(X)`$ (23)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{R^2}}\lambda _l^2\mathrm{\Psi }_l(X),`$ (24)
with eigenvalues $`\lambda _l^2`$ (independent of $`R`$) and degeneracy $`g_l`$. If we now require $`\phi _{l,n}(x)`$ to satisfy the Klein-Gordon equation in Minkowski spacetime, $``$, with masses $`m_{l,n}^2`$,

$$\left[\mathrm{}+m_{l,n}^2\right]\mathrm{\Phi }_{l,n}(x)=0,$$
(25)
equation (21) leaves us with a radial equation for the modes $`Z_{l,n}(y)`$

$$𝒟_y^{(l)}Z_{l,n}=m_{l,n}^2Z_{l,n},$$
(26)
where the differential operator $`𝒟_y`$ is given by

$$𝒟_y^{(l)}=e^{2\sigma }\left[e^{D_1\sigma }_ye^{D_1\sigma }_y+\mu _l^22D_1\xi \sigma ^{\prime \prime }\right],$$
(27)
and

$$\mu _l^2=m^2+\frac{1}{R^2}\lambda _l^2D_1(D_1+1)k^2\xi .$$
(28)
The most general solution to (26) can be written in terms of Bessel functions and by imposing the appropriate boundary conditions, we find that the eigenvalues $`m_n`$ are determined by the transcendental equation:

$$F_{\nu _l}^\beta \left(\frac{m_{n,l}}{ka}\right)=0.$$
(29)
The function $`F_{\nu _l}^\beta (z)`$ is given by

$`F_{\nu _l}^\beta (z)=Y_{\nu _l}^\beta (az)J_{\nu _l}^\beta (z)J_{\nu _l}^\beta (az)Y_{\nu _l}^\beta (z),`$ (30)
where

$$\nu _l^2=\frac{\mu _l^2}{k^2}+\frac{D_1^2}{4},$$
(31)
and

$$J_{\nu _l}^\beta (z)=J_{\nu _l}(z)$$
(32)
for twisted field configurations ($`Z_{n,l}(y)=Z_{n,l}(y)`$) or

$$J_{\nu _l}^\beta (z)=j_{\nu _l}(z)=\frac{1}{2}D_1(14\xi )J_{\nu _l}(z)+zJ_{\nu _l}^{}(z),$$
(33)
for untwisted ones ($`Z_{n,l}(y)=Z_{n,l}(y)`$). Analogous expressions are valid also for $`Y_{\nu _l}^\beta (z)`$. In the following we focus on the case of untwisted fields only.

The one loop effective action $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}`$ can be expressed as the sum over the contributions of each mode :

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}=d^{42ϵ}xV(s),$$
(34)
with

$$V(s)=\frac{\mu ^{2ϵ}}{2(4\pi )^2}\mathrm{\Gamma }(s)\underset{n,l}{}^{}g_lm_{n,l}^{2s},$$
(35)
where the prime in the sum assumes that the zero mass mode is excluded and $`s=2+ϵ`$. We are using dimensional regularisation and continuing along Minkowski spacetime ($`442ϵ`$) and $`\mu `$ is a renormalisation scale introduced for dimensional reasons.

In order to evaluate the sum in (35), we find convenient to separate the $`\lambda _0`$mode from the rest of the towerThis procedure is not essential, however, by performing such spitting, the RS contribution comes about explicitly. Moreover, the RS divergence has to cancel when the two contributions are summed and this provides a non-trivial check of the calculation:

$$V(s)=V_{RS}(s)+V_{}(s).$$
(36)
The first term corresponds to the usual Randall-Sundrum contribution:

$$V_{RS}(s)=\frac{(ka)^4}{2(4\pi )^2}(ka/\mu )^{2ϵ}\mathrm{\Gamma }(s)\underset{n}{}^{}g_0x_{n,0}^{2s},$$
(37)
with $`x_{n,l}=\frac{m_{n,l}}{ka}`$. This term, present only when $`g_0=1`$, has been evaluated in  and we report the result without further comments:

$`V_{RS}`$ $`=`$ $`g_0{\displaystyle \frac{k^4}{32\pi ^2}}(k/\mu )^{2ϵ}\{d_4{\displaystyle \frac{1}{ϵ}}(1+a^{42ϵ})`$ (39)
$`+c_1+a^4c_22a^4𝒱(a)\},`$
where

$$𝒱(a)=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑zz^3\mathrm{ln}\left(1\frac{k_\nu (z)}{k_\nu (az)}\frac{i_\nu (az)}{i_\nu (z)}\right)$$
(40)
and the coefficients $`c_1`$ and $`c_2`$ do not depend on $`a`$. The remaining term in (36) is given by

$$V_{}(s)=\frac{(ka)^4}{2(4\pi )^2}(ka/\mu )^{2ϵ}\mathrm{\Gamma }(s)\underset{n,l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}g_lx_{n,l}^{2s},$$
(41)
and can be handled in the usual manner by transforming it into a contour integral and by deforming the contour appropriately, according to a general technique developed in  (See  for a comprehensive review). Standard manipulations lead to

$`V_{}(s)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(ka)^4}{2(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{(ka/\mu )^{2ϵ}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(1s)}}`$ (43)
$`{\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}g_l{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑zz^{2s}{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dz}}\mathrm{ln}P_{\nu _l}(z)`$
where

$$P_{\nu _l}(z)=F_{\nu _l}(iz)=i_{\nu _l}(az)k_{\nu _l}(z)i_{\nu _l}(z)k_{\nu _l}(az),$$
(44)
and

$`i_{\nu _l}(z)`$ $`=`$ $`zI_{\nu _l}^{}(z)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}D_1(14\xi )I_{\nu _l}(z),`$ (45)
$`k_{\nu _l}(z)`$ $`=`$ $`zK_{\nu _l}^{}(z)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}D_1(14\xi )K_{\nu _l}(z).`$ (46)
Now we have to analytically continue the previous expression (43) to the left of $`\mathrm{}(s)<1/2`$. A possible way of achieving this is to employ the uniform asymptotic expansion (UAE). This is because the order of the Bessel function depends explicitly on the eigenvalues $`\lambda _l`$. In order to apply the UAE, we rescale the integral (43), $`z\nu _lz`$:

$`V_{}(s)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(ka)^4}{2(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{(ka/\mu )^{2ϵ}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(1s)}}`$ (48)
$`{\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}g_l{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}d(\nu _lz)(\nu _lz)^{2s}{\displaystyle \frac{d}{d(\nu _lz)}}\mathrm{ln}P_{\nu _l}(\nu _lz),`$
and to isolate the divergent part, we express the integrand as its large $`\nu _l`$ portion plus terms leading to finite contributions.

By using (A1), (A2), we can recast (48) as the sum of three terms:

$$V_{}(s)=V_1+V_2+V_3,$$
(49)
with

$`V_j`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(ka)^4}{2(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{(ka/\mu )^{2ϵ}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(1s)}}{\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}g_l\nu _l^{2s}`$ (51)
$`{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑zz^{2s}{\displaystyle \frac{d}{dz}}\mathrm{ln}H_j(z),`$
and

$`H_1(z)`$ $`=`$ $`(1+a^2z^2)^{1/4}e^{\nu _l\eta (az)}(1+z^2)^{1/4}e^{\nu _l\eta (z)},`$ (52)
$`H_2(z)`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(I)}(z)\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(K)}(az),`$ (53)
$`H_3(z)`$ $`=`$ $`1e^{2\nu _l(\eta (az)\eta (z))}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(I)}(az)\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(K)}(z)}{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(I)}(z)\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(K)}(az)}},`$ (54)
where $`\eta (z)`$ is defined in the appendix. The first term is straightforward to evaluate and gives

$`V_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(ka)^4}{8(4\pi )^2}}(ka/\mu )^{2ϵ}\{\mathrm{\Gamma }(s)\widehat{\zeta }(s)(1+a^{2s})`$ (56)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\sqrt{\pi }}}\mathrm{\Gamma }(s1/2)\widehat{\zeta }(s1/2)(1a^{2s})\}.`$
The second one is slightly more involved to evaluate. The uniform asymptotic expansion (A16), (A17) allows us to write

$`V_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(ka)^4}{2(4\pi )^2}}(ka/\mu )^{2ϵ}\{{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{n}{}}}(1+(1)^na^{2s})`$ (58)
$`\sigma _{n,k}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(s+n/2+k)}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(k+n/2)}}\widehat{\zeta }(s+n/2)\}.`$
In order to deal with the sum over the eigenvalues $`\nu _l`$, we have defined the following base $`\zeta `$function:

$$\widehat{\zeta }(s)=\underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}g_l\nu _l^{2s}.$$
(59)
The last term in (49) is the usual non local contribution and, since it is finite by construction, we can safely put $`ϵ=0`$:

$$V_3=\frac{(ka)^4}{(4\pi )^2}\underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}g_l𝒱_l(a)$$
(60)
where

$$𝒱_l(a)=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑zz^3\mathrm{ln}\left\{1\frac{i_{\nu _l}(az)k_{\nu _l}(z)}{i_{\nu _l}(z)k_{\nu _l}(az)}\right\}.$$
(61)
In order to make the $`R`$dependence in (56) and (58) explicit, it is convenient to rescale the above defined $`\zeta `$function by expanding the binomial. A simple calculation gives:

$$\widehat{\zeta }(s)=\frac{\left(kR\right)^{2s}}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(s)}\underset{q=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{(1)^q}{q!}(kR\nu )^{2q}\mathrm{\Gamma }(s+q)\zeta (s+q)$$
(62)
where

$$\zeta (s)=\underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}g_l\lambda _l^{2s}$$
(63)
does not depend on $`R`$ and

$$\nu ^2=\frac{m^2}{k^2}D_1(1+D_1)\xi +\frac{D_1^2}{4}.$$

The use of (62) allows us to express the result in terms of the generalised $`\zeta `$function (63) and the additional (Mittag-Leffler) representation for the $`\zeta `$function can then be used to deal with the pole structure of (63) and express the residues at the poles in terms of geometrical quantities . The Mittag-Leffler representation for the $`\zeta `$function associated with the operator $`P_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ (see, for example, ) is

$$\zeta (s)=\frac{1}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(s)}\left\{\underset{p=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{\stackrel{~}{C}_p}{sD_2/2+p}+f(s)\right\},$$
(64)
where $`\stackrel{~}{C}_p=C_pg_0\delta _{p,D_2/2}`$ and the $`C_p`$ are the heat-kernel coefficients of the operator $`P_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, $`p`$ runs over the positive half integers and $`f(s)`$ is an entire function. As in the case of , since the internal space $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is boundaryless the heat-kernel coefficients of semi-integer order are zero. Relation (64) can now be used to regulate the effective potential and some calculations lead to

$`V(s)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(ka)^4}{2(4\pi )^2}}(ka/\mu )^{2ϵ}\left(kR\right)^{2s}`$ (68)
$`{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{q=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1+(1)^na^{2s})\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{ϵ}}𝐚_{n,q}+𝐛_{n,q}\right)(kR)^{2q+n}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{g_0k^4}{2(4\pi )^2}}(k/\mu )^{2ϵ}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{d_4}{ϵ}}\left(1+a^{42ϵ}\right)+c_1+a^4c_2\right\}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{(ka)^4}{(4\pi )^2}}\left\{g_0𝒱(a)+{\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}g_l𝒱_l(a)\right\}`$
where the coefficients of the previous expression can be written as

$$𝐚_{n,q}=\frac{(1)^q}{q!}\nu ^{2q}\stackrel{~}{C}_{2+D_2/2n/2q}𝐀_n$$
(69)
where

$`𝐀_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8\sqrt{\pi }}},`$ (70)
$`𝐀_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}},`$ (71)
$`𝐀_n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{n}{}}}S_{n,k},\text{for}n>1`$ (72)
$`S_{n,k}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(k+n/2+s)}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(k+n/2)\mathrm{\Gamma }(n/2+s)}}\sigma _{n,k}`$ (73)
The coefficients $`𝐛_{n,q}`$ are related to the $`𝐚_{n,q}`$ via the following correspondence

$$𝐛_{n,q}=𝐚_{n,q}(\stackrel{~}{C}_p\mathrm{\Omega }_p),$$

where the $`\mathrm{\Omega }_p`$ represent the finite part in the power series of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(s)\zeta (s)`$ around $`s=p`$.

A check on the previous result is provided by the cancellation of the (lower dimensional) RS divergence, given by

$$g_0d_4\frac{k^4(1+a^4)}{32\pi ^2ϵ}=g_0k^4\frac{(1+a^4)}{32\pi ^2ϵ}(\mathrm{\Delta }_0+\mathrm{\Delta }_2\nu ^2+\mathrm{\Delta }_4\nu ^4),$$

where

$`\mathrm{\Delta }_0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{27}{128}}+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{8}}\mathrm{\Delta }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Delta }^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Delta }^3{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\mathrm{\Delta }^4`$ (74)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{13}{16}}\mathrm{\Delta }+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Delta }^2`$ (75)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }_4`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}`$ (76)
$`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}D_1(14\xi ).`$ (77)
A simple inspection of (68) shows that the relevant terms for such a cancellation are the ones corresponding to the couples $`(n,q)=(0,2),(2,1),(4,0)`$. Such terms can be easily extracted from (68) and the use of the coefficients $`\sigma _{n,k}`$ (the relevant ones are reported in the appendix, (A20)) shows that the RS divergence is indeed cancelled.

The result for the vacuum energy (68) is divergent and needs to be renormalised. The counterterm action can be constructed analogously to the case of two equal warpings :

$`S_{n,q}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{32\pi ^2ϵ}}{\displaystyle \underset{\pm }{}}{\displaystyle d^Dx\sqrt{\widehat{g}_\pm }\widehat{\kappa }_\pm ^{(n,q)}\widehat{}_\pm ^{(4+D_2n2q)/2}}=`$ (78)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{32\pi ^2ϵ}}{\displaystyle d^{42ϵ}x\frac{(kR)^{2q+n}}{R^4}\left\{a^{42ϵ}+(1)^n\right\}\kappa ^{(n,q)}}`$ (79)
where we have defined (the factor proportional to $`v_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ has been reabsorbed in the coefficients $`\kappa ^{(n,q)}`$)

$$\widehat{\kappa }_{}^{(n,q)}=(1)^n\widehat{\kappa }_+^{(n,q)}=k^{2q+n}\kappa ^{(n,q)},$$
(80)
and it is easy to see that all the divergences can be reabsorbed in counterterms of the previous type. Once we subtract the counter-terms, we arrive at the following expression for the renormalised effective potential

$`V(a)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(1/R)^4}{2(4\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{q=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{𝐚_{n,q}\mathrm{ln}(\mu R)^2+𝐛_{n,q}}{(a^4+(1)^n)^1}}(kR)^{2q+n}`$ (83)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{g_0k^4}{2(4\pi )^2}}[c_1+a^4c_2+(1+a^4)d_4\mathrm{ln}(k/\mu )^2]`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{(ka)^4}{(4\pi )^2}}\left[g_0𝒱(a)+{\displaystyle \underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}g_l𝒱_l(a)\right].`$
## IV Radion stabilisation and quantum self-consistency of the solution

In the previous section we have computed and renormalised the Casimir energy arising from a massive bulk scalar field non-minimally coupled to the curvature and from a massless bulk gauge field. So we are now in the position to see whether or not quantum effects provide a reasonable stabilisation mechanism for the class of models of the type $`AdS\times \mathrm{\Sigma }`$. To this aim, let us consider the full action $`S`$, where we include the contribution $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}`$ arising from a quantised field:

$$S=S_{BG}+\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)},$$
(84)
where we generically write the quantum contribution as

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }^{(1)}=d^4x\sqrt{\stackrel{~}{g}}V(a).$$
(85)
$`S_{BG}`$ is the classical background action obtained by using the ansatz for the metric (1) (with $`\eta _{\mu \nu }\stackrel{~}{g}_{\mu \nu }(x)`$) in (4) and by integrating out the extra $`D_2+1`$ dimensions. Now, varying the full action $`S`$ with respect to $`\stackrel{~}{g}_{\mu \nu }(x)`$

$$\frac{\delta S}{\delta \stackrel{~}{g}_{\mu \nu }}=0,$$
(86)
and requiring that the minimum is at $`\stackrel{~}{g}_{\mu \nu }(x)=\eta _{\mu \nu }`$ will tell us whether or not the classical solution is spoiled by quantum effects. On the other side, varying $`S`$ with respect to the radion $`a`$

$$\frac{\delta S}{\delta a}=0,$$
(87)
at $`\stackrel{~}{g}_{\mu \nu }(x)=\eta _{\mu \nu }`$, will tell us whether we can obtain an exponentially large hierarchy, $`a=e^{\pi kr}`$ (with $`kr12`$), in which case such solution also solves the hierarchy problem. We want to stress that one can have solutions that satisfy (86) but not (87) and therefore are self-consistent but do not solve the hierarchy problem. A simple calculation shows that by combining the previous requirements (86), (87), the following constraint for the effective potential is obtained:

$$(1a^4)V^{}(a)+4a^3V(a)=0,$$
(88)
where the prime denotes derivative with respect to $`a`$. Equation (88) is exactly the same as the one obtained for the RS model .

We have now to specify the matter content of our model and in turn the function $`V(a)`$. We consider two possibilities: a minimal model whose action is given by (4) and a non-minimal model where (4) is our classical background theory upon which we quantise a bulk scalar field. In the first case, we assume that the gauge field splits into a classical plus a quantum part:

$$A_\mu =A_\mu ^C+A_\mu ^Q,$$
(89)
and thus the quantum contribution comes from the quantum counterpart of the gauge field. We shall consider the $`AdS`$ components only, which have a zero vev and do not couple to the Yang-Mills flux configuration. In the non-minimal case, it is the scalar field that provides us with the quantum effective potential.

We recast the result for the effective potential as follows:

$$V(a)=\frac{k^4}{32\pi ^2}\left\{\mathrm{\Gamma }_1+a^4\mathrm{\Gamma }_2+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{NL}(a)\right\}$$
(90)
where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_2`$ do not depend on $`a`$. The non-local contribution,

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{NL}(a)=a^4𝒱(a)+a^4\underset{l=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}g_l𝒱_l(a),$$
(91)
is slightly more involved to inspect, however, in our case, it is sufficient to see that the contribution coming from the massive Kaluza-Klein modes (involving the sum over $`l`$) is highly suppressed with respect to the (RS) zero-mode term, proportional to $`𝒱(a)`$. This can be shown by noticing that the dominant contribution to the integral in $`𝒱_l(a)`$ comes from the region $`z1`$. Expanding the integrand in such region allows one to see that $`𝒱_l(a)`$ goes like $`a^{2\nu _l}`$ and a simple inspection of the sum tells us that the non-local contribution coming from the massive KK states is proportional to powers of $`a^{1/(kR)}`$. The non local contribution can then be approximated as

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{NL}(a)a^4𝒱(a).$$
(92)
Fixing the field content of the theory (or the bulk parameters) will uniquely determine the function $`𝒱(a)`$. (Such term has been evaluated for any of $`\nu `$ in ). By expanding the integrand for small $`a`$, one finds that in the minimal case (only with a quantised gauge field)

$$𝒱(a)=\frac{\gamma }{\mathrm{ln}a},$$
(93)
with $`\gamma `$ being $`a`$independent. In the non-minimal case one has to distinguish three possibilities: when the order of the Bessel functions is $`\nu =0`$, this corresponds to taking

$$\xi =\frac{4m^2+D_1^2k^2}{4D_1(D_1+1)k^2},$$
(94)
when $`\nu =1`$ and this corresponds to fixing the values of $`\xi `$ and $`m`$ according to (19) and (20), and finally, when $`\nu `$ is different from the two previous values Fixing the bulk matter content can also be understood as a sort of tuning, which can be removed only by a more fundamental theory that leads to the specified field content. Moreover, special values of the mass of bulk scalars are unstable under quantum corrections unless supersymmetry is present. In the first case, we find

$$𝒱(a)=\frac{\beta }{\alpha +\mathrm{ln}a},$$
(95)
where $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ do not depend on $`a`$. The second case, obviously, gives back relation (93), whereas in the third case $`𝒱(a)`$ is proportional to $`a^N`$ with $`N4`$.

The previous relations along with the self-consistency condition (88) allow us to see in which cases we obtain a solution to the hierarchy problem with the bonus for the solution to be self-consistent.

By using the expression for the effective potential (90) and (93), we find that the solution to (88) in the minimal case, in the limit of $`a1`$, is

$$ae^{\gamma /(\mathrm{\Gamma }_1+\mathrm{\Gamma }_2)}$$
(96)
which shows that there is no need of any fine tuning in order to get an exponentially small $`a`$.

In the non-minimal case, one can easily check that fixing the parameters $`\xi `$ and $`m`$ according to (20) or (94) provides also a large hierarchy, whereas in the other cases no solution to (88) is found for small values of $`a`$.

## V Conclusions

In this article we have investigated the role of quantum effects arising from bulk fields in higher dimensional brane models. Specifically, we have considered a class of warped brane models whose topology is $`AdS_5\times \mathrm{\Sigma }`$, where $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is a $`D_2`$ dimensional one-parameter compact manifold and two branes of codimension one are placed at the orbifold fixed points.

We have seen that such a set-up can be obtained from Einstein-Yang-Mills theory. Contrarily to the case studied in , where both the radion $`a`$ and the radius of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ were undetermined classically, here the radius of the internal space $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is stabilised at a size comparable with the higher dimensional cut-off once the Yang-Mills flux is tuned according to (8). This guarantees that, when matter is placed on the wall, the extra dimensions in the $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$direction remain invisible, as it must be. On the other hand, the fact that the size of the internal manifold is of order $`1/\widehat{M}`$, does not suggest any new way of addressing the hierarchy, which is resolved only through a redshift effect coming from the $`AdS`$ direction.

We considered two possible scenarios: a first one, which we labeled as ‘minimal’, where the action is just the Einstein-Yang-Mills one and only the Yang-Mills field is quantised, and a second one, called ‘non-minimal’, in which we quantised a scalar field on a classical Einstein-Yang-Mills background.

We evaluated the renormalised one-loop effective action at lowest order, namely the Casimir energy in the case of a massive non-minimally coupled scalar field. The resulting scalar effective potential can be related to the one arising from quantised gauge fields by appropriately fixing the parameters $`\xi `$ and $`m`$.

The computation is similar to the one carried out in , with some technical differences due to the explicit presence of the eigenvalues of the scalar operator on the manifold $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ in the order of the Bessel functions. This can be effectively dealt with by using the uniform asymptotic expansion of the modes, which turned out slightly more involved than the corresponding computation in the case of . On the other hand, the Mittag-Leffler expansion for the generalized $`\zeta `$function allowed us to express the Casimir energy in terms of heat-kernel coefficients of the internal space $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ as in the case previously considered in . The same non trivial check of the cancellation of the RS divergence works. Also the renormalisation is carried out analogously to  by subtracting suitable counter-terms proportional to a number of boundary or bulk local operators.

Finally we investigated the self consistency of the model by requiring that the quantum corrected action is minimised by the background solution. As for the stabilization our analysis indicates that the Casimir force can stabilise the radion without fine tuning thanks to any KK mode whose index $`\nu _l`$ is $`0`$ or $`1`$. The latter is reproduced in the ‘minimal’ case by the zero mode of the gauge field, in analogy to what was found in  in the Randall Sundrum context. Obviously, the (scalar) laplacian $`\mathrm{\Delta }_\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ defined on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ must have a zero eigenvalue for this to happen.

For scalar fields, a large contribution to the effective potential is produced only at the price of choosing appropriately the mass and the non-minimal coupling. In such case a large hierarchy is generated, but the masses of the modes are unstable under quantum effects and supersymmetry has to be invoked.

It would be interesting to apply the previous ideas to models where both the $`x`$ and $`X`$coordinates cover curved internal spaces, as it could, for example, happen in a cosmological scenario. In such case the self-consistency condition is more involved than the one presented here and might allow more interesting conclusions.

###### Acknowledgements.

The constant advise of J. Garriga throughout the completion of this work is mostly appreciated. A.F. acknowledges fruitful discussions with A. Pomarol, L. Da Rold and W. Naylor. The work of A.F. is supported by the European Community via the award of a Marie Curie Fellowship. The support of FEDER under project FPA 2002-00748 is also kindly acknowledged. O.P. is supported by MICYT under grant FPA 2002-00648 and by DURSI under grant 2001SGR00188.

## A Uniform Asymptotic Expansion and computation of the coefficients $`\sigma _{n,k}`$

In the present appendix, we report the relevant formulas concerning the uniform asymptotic expansion (UAE) for the altered Bessel functions, $`i_{\nu _l}(z)`$ and $`k_{\nu _l}(z)`$, used in the computation of $`V_2`$. By using the results reported in , we find

$`i_{\nu _l}(\nu _lz)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\nu _le^{\nu _l\eta }}{\sqrt{2\pi \nu _l}}}(1+z^2)^{1/4}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(I)}(z),`$ (A1)
$`k_{\nu _l}(\nu _lz)`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{\pi \nu _l}{2}}}e^{\nu _l\eta }(1+z^2)^{1/4}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(K)}(z),`$ (A2)
with

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(I)}(z)=\frac{1}{2\nu _l\sqrt{1+z^2}}D_1(14\xi )\mathrm{\Sigma }_1+\mathrm{\Sigma }_2,$$
(A3)
and

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(K)}(z)=\frac{1}{2\nu _l\sqrt{1+z^2}}D_1(14\xi )\mathrm{\Sigma }_3\mathrm{\Sigma }_4,$$
(A4)
where

$`t`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{1+z^2}}},`$ (A5)
$`\eta (z)`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{1+z^2}+\mathrm{ln}\left({\displaystyle \frac{z}{1+\sqrt{1+z^2}}}\right).`$ (A6)
The functions $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_I`$ are given by

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{u_k}{\nu _l^k}},`$ (A7)
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{v_k}{\nu _l^k}},`$ (A8)
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_3`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1)^k{\displaystyle \frac{u_k}{\nu _l^k}},`$ (A9)
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }_4`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1)^k{\displaystyle \frac{v_k}{\nu _l^k}}.`$ (A10)
with the coefficients of the previous expansions expressed by the following recursion relations:

$`u_{k+1}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}t^2(1t^2)u_k^{}(t)+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}{\displaystyle _0^t}(15x^2)u_k(x)𝑑x`$ (A11)
$`v_{k+1}(t)`$ $`=`$ $`u_{k+1}(t){\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}t(1t^2)u_k(t)t^2(1t^2)u_k^{}(t)`$ (A12)
with $`u_0(t)=1`$. It is possible to expand the previous functions in powers of $`\nu _l`$:

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(I)}(z)=1+\underset{j=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{p_j(t)}{\nu _l^j},$$
(A13)
$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(K)}(z)=1+\underset{j=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(1)^j\frac{p_j(t)}{\nu _l^j},$$
(A14)
where

$$p_j(t)=\frac{D_1(14\xi )}{2}tu_{j1}+v_j.$$
(A15)
It is now easy to see that, in order to obtain the coefficients $`\sigma _{n,k}`$, we only need to expand the logarithm of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{\nu _l}^{(I,K)}(z)`$:

$`\mathrm{ln}\left(1+{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{p_j(t)}{\nu _l^j}}\right)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{n}{}}}\sigma _{n,k}{\displaystyle \frac{t^{n+2k}}{\nu _l^n}}.`$ (A16)
$`\mathrm{ln}\left(1+{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1)^j{\displaystyle \frac{p_j(t)}{\nu ^j}}\right)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{n}{}}}(1)^n\sigma _{n,k}{\displaystyle \frac{t^{n+2k}}{\nu _l^n}}.`$ (A17)
The coefficients $`\sigma _{n,k}`$ can be obtained by using any symbolic manipulation program. We report here only the ones needed to cancel the RS divergence:

$`\sigma _{4,0}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{27}{128}}+{\displaystyle \frac{3}{8}}\mathrm{\Delta }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Delta }^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Delta }^3{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\mathrm{\Delta }^4,`$ (A18)
$`\sigma _{2,1}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{5}{8}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Delta },`$ (A19)
$`\sigma _{2,0}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{16}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Delta }{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Delta }^2,`$ (A20)
with $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ given by (77).


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# BRST quantization of string theory in 𝐴𝑑𝑆₃

## 1 Introduction

The BRST quantization of gauge theories was first applied to string theory in , and in  a proof of the no-ghost theorem was given in the BRST context. Once the physical space was identified with the cohomology of the BRST operator at a particular ghost number, the cohomology itself is built more or less explicitly, in order to show that it does not contain states of negative norm. In particular, in  it was shown that, for strings in flat space, physical states can be isometrically identified with the excitations in the light-cone gauge.

In  Frenkel, Garland and Zuckerman (FGZ) presented a technically simple but conceptually deep new proof of the no-ghost theorem in the BRST context, which relies heavily on the fact that the *relative* BRST cohomology111The relative BRST cohomology is defined imposing the additional constraints $`b_0=L_0=0`$ to the BRST cohomolgy (for fermionic strings in the Ramond sector, also $`\beta _0=G_0=0`$ ). See appendix A. at non-zero momentum is concentrated at one ghost number,222As shown in  (and in  for the NSR string), the cohomology of the *full* BRST complex at nonzero momentum consists of two isomorphic copies at consecutive ghost numbers. a result known as the “vanishing theorem”. Once the latter holds,333It should be noted that the vanishing theorem does not hold in less conventional settings. For example, the BRST analysis of 2D gravity coupled to $`c1`$ matter shows that physical states are distributed through several ghost numbers . the proof of the no-ghost theorem is reduced to showing the equality between the traces of two operators (the method was discussed in ). The power of the FGZ method lies on its economy: it probes the unitarity of the physical sector without explicitly building it. The method was applied to bosonic strings in , to NRS strings in , to $`^{1,d1}\times 𝒩`$ ($`d2`$) backgrounds in  and to $`^1\times 𝒩`$ backgrounds in .

The FGZ proof of the vanishing theorem  and its NSR extensions in , use techniques of homological algebra and do not depend on the details of the chiral algebra of the matter conformal field theory (CFT). The only assumption needed is that the matter CFT should be an $`L_{}`$-free Virasoro module.444This means that the Hilbert space of the chiral CFT can be expressed as a direct sum of spaces, each of which is built by the action of Virasoro $`L_{n<0}`$ operators on a Virasoro highest-weight state, such that states with different $`L_{n<0}`$ content are linearly independent. In the superconformal case, the operators $`G_{n<0}`$ should be included. The importance of this condition can be seen in a hand-waving way as follows. Since the BRST charge $`Q`$ is built out of the Virasoro modes only (and knows nothing about the worldsheet chiral algebra), certain homological statements about $`Q`$ (such as the vanishing theorem), can be proved when a basis for the space upon which $`Q`$ acts, can itself be obtained from Virasoro modes only. For flat space worldsheet CFT, the latter was shown in .

In this work we will apply the FGZ method to bosonic and NSR strings propagating in $`AdS_3\times 𝒩`$ backgrounds . Here $`𝒩`$ is a compact unitary CFT, with the necessary central charge for the worldsheet CFT to be critical. These vacua are relevant in the context of the $`AdS/CFT`$ correspondence . In the $`AdS_3/CFT_2`$ case, the infinite modes of the two-dimensional (super)conformal algebras in the dual boundary CFT can be constructed explicitly (see  and references therein).

The vanishing theorem holds in $`AdS_3\times 𝒩`$ vacua, because the worldsheet CFT is an $`L_{}`$-free Virasoro module, as shown in  for regular $`SL(2,)`$ representations and in  for the spectrally flowed cases.555For fermionic strings, refs.  consider only the NS sector. The results can be easily extended to the R sector. Alternatively, one can consider the $`AdS_3\times 𝒩`$ backgrounds as a particular case of the backgrounds studied in , the timelike $`U(1)`$ current being the $`J^3(z)`$ current of $`SL(2,)`$. But since the whole $`AdS_3\times 𝒩`$ CFT is an $`L_{}`$-free Virasoro module, the new filtration introduced in  (which considers only the timelike $`U(1)`$, $`c=1`$ CFT), is not strictly necessary.

As in the $`^1\times 𝒩`$ vacua studied in , $`AdS_3\times 𝒩`$ is a nontrivial setting to see the BRST quantization at work since, due to the absence of a lightcone direction in $`AdS_3`$, we cannot identify the action of the ghost degrees of freedom as annihilating the “transversal” string excitations.

The unitarity puzzles posed by string theory in $`AdS_3`$ backgrounds  were settled in the old covariant quantization (OCQ) formalism in . It was shown there that physical states belong to the $`SL(2,)/U(1)`$ coset, modulo spurious states. This reduces the problem to the unitarity of the coset representations, which was proved in  and  for the bosonic and fermionic cases, respectively. Coset unitarity requires a bound for the the spin of the discrete representations of $`SL(2,)`$. This bound is rather ubiquitous, and we discuss it in section 3.1. As we show in section 4, one important point in which the OCQ formalism differs from the FGZ approach, is that for fermionic NRS strings, in the FGZ proof there is no need for the unitarity of the *supersymmetric* $`SL(2,)/U(1)`$ coset , the bosonic results of  being sufficient. A different approach to string unitarity in $`AdS_3`$ has been advocated in .

Both in the OCQ and FGZ approaches, the general results do not hold when $`J_0^3=0`$, since the matter CFT is no longer an $`L_{}`$-free module. The unitarity of physical states must then be checked by hand.666This is similar to the zero-momentum states in flat space. These exceptional cases have been already studied in  for different representations, and will not be considered here.

The plan of this work is as follows. In section 2 we review the string spectrum in $`AdS_3`$. In section 3 we review the Hodge theory of the string BRST complex, which is an elegant and clear setting in which to formulate the FGZ method, which we do in section 3.1. In section 4 we calculate all the traces needed to prove the no-ghost theorem for the different representations. Finally, in section 5 we discuss possible generalizations to other curved backgrounds. In appendix A we summarize the essentials of the BRST formalism needed in this work. Appendices B and C are devoted to technical points used in the body of the paper. We work in the holomorphic sector. For closed strings, a similar antiholomorphic copy should be considered.

## 2 The affine $`SL(2,)`$ theory

### 2.1 The bosonic algebra

The space $`AdS_3`$ is the universal cover of the group manifold $`SL(2,)`$, so the action of a string moving in an $`AdS_3`$ background is an $`SL(2,)`$ WZW model. The symmetry algebra is the affine $`SL(2,)`$ algebra at level $`k`$ ($`k>2`$), generated by three currents $`J^{3,\pm }(z)`$ satisfying the OPEs

$`J^3(z)J^3(w)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k/2}{(zw)^2}},`$
$`J^+(z)J^{}(w)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{(zw)^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{2J^3(w)}{zw}},`$
$`J^3(z)J^\pm (w)`$ $``$ $`\pm {\displaystyle \frac{J^\pm (w)}{zw}}.`$ (1)
Using the Sugawara construction, the stress tensor is

$$T^{SL(2,)}=\frac{1}{k2}\frac{1}{2}\left(J^+J^{}+J^{}J^+2J^3J^3\right).$$
(2)
and its modes close a Virasoro algebra with central charge $`c_{SL(2,)}=\frac{3k}{k2}`$. Expanding the currents in modes as

$$J^{3,\pm }(z)=\underset{n}{}\frac{J_n^{3,\pm }}{z^{n+1}},$$
(3)
the current algebra (1) can be written as

$`[J_n^3,J_m^3]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{2}}n\delta _{n+m,0},`$
$`[J_n^3,J_m^\pm ]`$ $`=`$ $`\pm J_{n+m}^\pm ,`$
$`[J_n^+,J_m^{}]`$ $`=`$ $`2J_{n+m}^3+kn\delta _{n+m,0},`$ (4)
with all other commutators vanishing.

The highest weight representations of (1) and (4) are built starting from unitary representations of the $`SL(2,)`$ Lie algebra $`J_0^{3,\pm }`$. These are characterized by the eigenvalues of the Casimir operator $`\frac{1}{2}(J_0^+J_0^{}+J_0^{}J_0^+)(J_0^3)^2`$, which will be denoted by $`j(j1)`$, and the states within each representation are labelled by the eigenvalue of $`J_0^3`$, which will be denoted by $`m`$. These representations are the primary states for the current algebra. They are annihilated by $`J_{n>0}^{3,\pm }`$, and the Fock space of states is built by acting on them with $`J_{n<0}^{3,\pm }`$.

The unitary representations of the $`SL(2,)`$ Lie algebra $`J_0^{3,\pm }`$ which appear in the spectrum of strings moving in an $`AdS_3\times 𝒩`$ background are :

1. *Highest weight discrete representations*

$$𝒟_j^+=\{|j;m:m=j,j+1,j+2,\mathrm{}\}$$

where $`|j;j`$ is annihilated by $`J_0^{}`$ and $`j`$ is a real number such that $`1/2<j<(k1)/2`$.
2. *Lowest weight discrete representations*

$$𝒟_j^{}=\{|j;m:m=j,j1,j2,\mathrm{}\}$$

where $`|j;j`$ is annihilated by $`J_0^+`$ and $`j`$ is a real number such that $`1/2<j<(k1)/2`$.
3. *Continuous representations*

$$𝒞_{j,\alpha }=\{|j,\alpha ;m:m=\alpha ,\alpha \pm 1,\alpha \pm 2,\mathrm{}\}$$

where $`0\alpha <1`$ and $`j=1/2+is`$, where $`s`$ is a real number.

The bounds on $`j`$ appearing for $`𝒟_j^\pm `$ can be understood in terms of consistency conditions for the primary states. The lower bound, $`1/2<j`$, is necessary for the normalizability of the primary states when their norm is interpreted as the $`^2`$ inner product of functions in the $`SL(2,)`$ group manifold . Regarding the upper bound, $`j<(k1)/2`$, in  it was noted that it is necessary for the unitarity of the primary states, when their norm is interpreted as the two-point function of the vertex operators creating them from the vacuum. Moreover, adopting either the upper or the lower bound for $`j`$, the other one appears when imposing the $`w=\pm 1`$ spectral flow (see below) to be a symmetry of the spectrum. Finally, the compelling evidence for the correctness of these bounds on $`j`$ comes from the fact that only this range of $`j`$ appears in the spectrum of the thermal partition function of the model, computed by path integral techniques in .

In the computations of section 4, we will be interested in the characters of the representations , which are very easy to obtain because the action of the $`J_{n<0}^{3,\pm }`$ modes is free for the representations considered . For $`𝒟_j^+`$ we have

$`\chi _j^+(q,z)=Tr_{𝒟_j^+}\left(q^{L_0}z^{J_0^3}\right)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{q^{\frac{j(j1)}{k2}}z^j}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)(1q^{n1}z)(1q^nz^1)}},`$ (5)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{q^{\frac{j(j1)}{k2}+\frac{1}{8}}z^{j\frac{1}{2}}}{i\mathrm{\Theta }_1(q,z)}}.`$
Eq. (5) should be understood as a formal series expansion which converges to (5) when $`|q|<|z|<1`$. The elliptic function $`\mathrm{\Theta }_1(q,z)`$ is

$`\mathrm{\Theta }_1(q,z)`$ $`=`$ $`iz^{1/2}q^{1/8}{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1q^n)(1q^{n1}z)(1q^nz^1),`$ (6)
$`=`$ $`i{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}(1)^nz^{n1/2}q^{\frac{(n1/2)^2}{2}}.`$
For the $`𝒞_{j,\alpha }`$ representations, the character is

$$\widehat{\chi }_{j=1/2+is,\alpha }(q,z)=Tr_{𝒞_{j=1/2+is,\alpha }}\left(q^{L_0}z^{J_0^3}\right)=\frac{q^{\frac{s^2+1/4}{k2}}}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)^3}\underset{n}{}z^{\alpha +n}.$$
(7)
The character of $`𝒟_j^{}`$ can be obtained from the spectral flow of $`𝒟_j^+`$ (see below).

### 2.2 $`SL(2,)/U(1)\times U(1)`$ decomposition and spectral flow

It will be convenient to decompose both the currents and the spectrum into the direct product of a parafermionic $`SL(2,)/U(1)`$ model and the timelike $`U(1)`$ model corresponding to $`J^3(z)`$. For the currents $`J^{3,\pm }(z)`$, this can be performed by representing them as

$`J^3(z)`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{k}{2}}}X(z),`$
$`J^\pm (z)`$ $`=`$ $`\psi ^\pm (z)e^{\pm \sqrt{\frac{2}{k}}X},`$ (8)
with

$`X(z)X(w)`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{log}(zw),`$
$`X(z)\psi ^\pm (w)`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}.`$ (9)
Note that the field $`X(z)`$ is antihermitean, in order for $`J^3(z)`$ to be hermitean and $`J^+(z)^{}=J^{}(z)`$. The fields $`\psi ^\pm `$ form an $`SL(2,)/U(1)`$ parafermionic theory introduced in , and are a non-minimal generalization of the $`SU(2)/U(1)`$ parafermions of . The OPEs of $`\psi ^\pm `$ can be read from (1) and (9).

The stress tensor is similarly decomposed into

$$T^{SL(2,)}=T^{SL(2,)/U(1)}+T^{U(1)},$$
(10)
with

$$T^{U(1)}=\frac{1}{k}J^3J^3.$$
(11)
The decomposition can also be performed on the representations. Indeed, every representation $`𝒟_j^+,𝒞_j`$ gives rise to an infinite number of parafermionic representations $`\lambda _{j,n},\widehat{\lambda }_{j,n}`$ with $`n`$. The $`𝒟_j^+,𝒞_j`$ Hilbert spaces can be decomposed into

$`𝒟_j^+`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}\lambda _{j,n}𝒰_{j+n},`$
$`𝒞_{j,\alpha }`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}\widehat{\lambda }_{j,\alpha +n}𝒰_{\alpha +n},`$ (12)
where $`𝒰_m`$ is a highest-weight representation of the timelike current $`J^3(z)`$ with $`J_0^3`$ eigenvalue $`m`$. The $`\lambda _{j,n},\widehat{\lambda }_{j,n}`$ representations are built by acting with the modes of $`\psi ^\pm `$ on parafermionic highest-weight states. The reader can find details in . We will be mainly interested in their characters , which are

$`\lambda _{j,n}(q)`$ $`=`$ $`Tr_{\lambda _{j,n}}\left(q^{L_0}\right)={\displaystyle \frac{q^{\frac{j(j1)}{k2}+\frac{(j+n)^2}{k}}}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{s=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1)^sq^{\frac{1}{2}s(s+2n+1)},`$
$`\widehat{\lambda }_{j,\alpha +n}(q)`$ $`=`$ $`Tr_{\widehat{\lambda }_{j,\alpha +n}}\left(q^{L_0}\right)={\displaystyle \frac{q^{\frac{j(j1)}{k2}+\frac{(\alpha +n)^2}{k}}}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)^2}}.`$ (13)
In appendix A we show explicitly that the decompositions (12) are, in terms of the characters,

$`\chi _j^+(q,z)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}z^{j+n}\lambda _{j,n}(q)\zeta _{j+n}(q),`$
$`\widehat{\chi }_{j=1/2+is,\alpha }(q,z)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}z^{\alpha +n}\widehat{\lambda }_{j,\alpha +n}(q)\zeta _{\alpha +n}(q),`$ (14)
where

$$\zeta _m(q)Tr_{𝒰_m}\left(q^{L_0}\right)=\frac{q^{\frac{m^2}{k}}}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)}.$$
(15)
Now, given any integer $`w`$, the algebra (4) is preserved by the spectral flow $`J_n^{3,\pm }\stackrel{~}{J}_n^{3,\pm }`$ first introduced in  and defined by

$`\stackrel{~}{J}_n^3`$ $`=`$ $`J_n^3{\displaystyle \frac{k}{2}}w\delta _{n,0},`$
$`\stackrel{~}{J}_n^\pm `$ $`=`$ $`J_{n\pm w}^\pm .`$ (16)
This transformation maps $`L_0`$ to

$$\stackrel{~}{L}_0=L_0+wJ_0^3\frac{k}{4}w^2.$$
(17)
The spectral flow can be implemented in (8) by

$$X(z)\stackrel{~}{X}(z)=X(z)+w\sqrt{\frac{k}{2}}\mathrm{log}z,$$
(18)
and leaving the parafermions $`\psi ^\pm (z)`$ untouched. For $`w=\pm 1`$, the symmetry (16) maps the $`𝒟_j^{}`$ representation into $`𝒟_{k/\mathit{2}j}^\pm `$. Note that under this mapping the upper and lower bounds of $`j`$ are interchanged. Including the $`w=\pm 1`$ spectrally flowed states, we can just consider $`𝒟_j^+`$ representations.

For generic $`w`$, it was shown in  that the Hilbert space $`𝒟_j^+`$ is mapped into new representations which must be included in a consistent description of a string propagating in $`AdS_3\times 𝒩`$. The way to include these representations is to take usual representations $`𝒟_j^+,𝒞_{j,\alpha }`$ for flowed operators $`\stackrel{~}{J}_n^{3,\pm }`$, and measure their quantum numbers with unflowed $`J_0^3,L_0`$. Alternatively, instead of this *active* procedure, we can use a *passive* one, and obtain the flowed sectors by acting with the unflowed operators $`J_n^{3,\pm }`$ on flowed primaries. Starting with an $`SL(2,)`$ vertex operator

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_{j,m}=\mathrm{\Psi }_{j,m}e^{m\sqrt{\frac{2}{k}}X},$$
(19)
where $`\mathrm{\Psi }_{j,m}`$ is a parafermionic primary, the flowed vertex operator is obtained applying to it the mapping (18), yielding

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_{j,m}^w=\mathrm{\Psi }_{j,m}e^{(m+wk/2)\sqrt{\frac{2}{k}}X}.$$
(20)
Note that for $`𝒞_{j,\alpha }`$ representations, all the excited physical states belong to flowed sectors. This can be seen from the mass-shell condition,

$$L_0=\frac{\frac{1}{4}+s^2}{k2}w(\alpha +n)+\frac{kw^2}{4}+N+h^𝒩1=0,$$
(21)
where $`h^𝒩`$ is a highest weight of the inner theory and N is the level. It is clear that for $`w=0`$, eq. (21) can only be satisfied if $`N=0`$.

The characters of the flowed $`𝒟_j^w`$ representations are

$`\chi _j^w(q,z)`$ $`=`$ $`Tr_{𝒟_j^w}\left(q^{L_0}z^{J_0^3}\right)=Tr_{𝒟_j^+}\left(q^{\stackrel{~}{L}_0w\stackrel{~}{J}_0^3kw^2/4}z^{\stackrel{~}{J}_0^3+kw/2}\right)`$ (22)
$`=`$ $`q^{kw^2/4}z^{kw/2}Tr_{𝒟_j^+}\left(q^{\stackrel{~}{L}_0}(zq^w)^{\stackrel{~}{J}_0^3}\right)`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^wq^{\left[\frac{j(j1)}{k2}(k2)\frac{w^2}{4}(2j1)\frac{w}{2}+\frac{1}{8}\right]}z^{\left[j+(k2)\frac{w}{2}\frac{1}{2}\right]}}{i\mathrm{\Theta }_1(q,z)}}.`$
where we have used the property

$$\mathrm{\Theta }_1(q,zq^w)=(1)^wq^{w^2/2}z^w\mathrm{\Theta }_1(q,z).$$
(23)
For the $`𝒞_{j,\alpha }^w`$ representations we obtain similarly

$`\widehat{\chi }_{j=1/2+is,\alpha }^w(q,z)`$ $`=`$ $`Tr_{𝒞_{j,\alpha }^w}\left(q^{L_0}z^{J_0^3}\right)`$ (24)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{q^{\frac{s^2+1/4}{k2}kw^2/4w\alpha }}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)^3}}{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}z^{\alpha +n+kw/2}q^{wn}.`$
As is clear from (20), the effect of the spectral flow is to “dislocate” the parafermionic and the $`J_0^3`$ quantum numbers by an amount $`wk/2`$. The decompositions (12) are generalized to

$`𝒟_j^w`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}\lambda _{j,n}𝒰_{j+n+\mathrm{𝑘𝑤}/\mathit{2}},`$
$`𝒞_{j,\alpha }^w`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}\widehat{\lambda }_{j,\alpha +n}𝒰_{\alpha +n+\mathrm{𝑘𝑤}/\mathit{2}}.`$ (25)
In appendix C we show explicitly that, in terms of the characters, the decompositions (25) are

$`\chi _j^w(q,z)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}z^{j+n+kw/2}\lambda _{j,n}(q)\zeta _{j+n+kw/2}(q),`$
$`\widehat{\chi }_{j=1/2+is,\alpha }^w(q,z)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n}{}}z^{\alpha +n+kw/2}\widehat{\lambda }_{j,\alpha +n}(q)\zeta _{\alpha +n+kw/2}(q).`$ (26)
### 2.3 The supersymmetric algebra

For fermionic strings in $`AdS_3\times 𝒩`$, we should consider the current algebra of affine supersymmetric $`SL(2,)`$ at level k. It is generated by three dimension-$`\frac{1}{2}`$ supercurrents $`\psi ^{3,\pm }+\theta J^{3,\pm }`$, whose modes satisfy

$`[J_n^3,J_m^3]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{2}}n\delta _{n+m,0},`$
$`[J_n^3,J_m^\pm ]`$ $`=`$ $`\pm J_{n+m}^\pm ,`$
$`[J_n^+,J_m^{}]`$ $`=`$ $`2J_{n+m}^3+kn\delta _{n+m,0},`$
$`[J_n^3,\psi _m^\pm ]`$ $`=`$ $`\pm \psi _{n+m}^\pm ,`$
$`[J_n^\pm ,\psi _m^{}]`$ $`=`$ $`2\psi _{n+m}^3,`$
$`[J_n^\pm ,\psi _m^3]`$ $`=`$ $`\psi _{n+m}^\pm ,`$
$`\{\psi _n^3,\psi _m^3\}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k}{2}}\delta _{n+m,0},`$
$`\{\psi _n^+,\psi _m^{}\}`$ $`=`$ $`k\delta _{n+m,0},`$ (27)
with all other (anti)commutators vanishing. The modding of $`J_n^a`$ is integer and that of $`\psi _n^a`$ half-integer (Neveu-Schwarz) or integer (Ramond). The worldsheet CFT is supersymmetric, the Sugawara stress tensor and the supercurrent being

$`T^{SL(2,)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2k}}[j^+j^{}+j^{}j^+]{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k}}j^3j^3{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2k}}[\psi ^+\psi ^{}+\psi ^{}\psi ^+]+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k}}\psi ^3\psi ^3,`$
$`G^{SL(2,)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{k}}[\psi ^+j^{}+\psi ^{}j^+]{\displaystyle \frac{2}{k}}\psi ^3j^3{\displaystyle \frac{2}{k^2}}\psi ^+\psi ^{}\psi ^3.`$ (28)
As usual, purely bosonic currents can be defined by

$`j^a`$ $`=`$ $`J^a\widehat{J}^a,`$
$`\widehat{J}^a`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{k}}f_{bc}^a\psi ^b\psi ^c.`$ (29)
The $`j^a`$ form an affine $`SL(2,)`$ bosonic algebra at level $`k+2`$. The $`\widehat{J}^a`$ and the $`\psi ^a`$ form a supersymmetric affine $`SL(2,)`$ algebra at level $`2`$ which commutes with $`j^a`$. The spectrum of the theory is the direct product of the Hilbert spaces of both theories. In the bosonic sector, the reprentations are the ones considered above. For the $`\psi ^a`$ currents, we have the usual representations for free fermions, for both Neveu-Schwarz and Ramond sectors. The spectral flow can be also defined in the $`\psi ^a,\widehat{J}^a`$ theory, but it just amounts to a rearrangement of the usual spectrum, as shown in .

## 3 The Hodge theory of the BRST complex

The formalism reviewed below was developed in , and can be found in . For similar results in the context of compact Lie algebras, see .

We will denote by $``$ the Hilbert space composed of the ghost plus matter sectors, with the restriction $`b_0=L_0=0`$, and also $`\beta _0=G_0=0`$ for fermionic strings in the Ramond sector. Although $``$ is infinite dimensional (due to the infinite degeneracy of the base states of the $`SL(2,)`$ representations), it can be decomposed into

$$=\underset{m}{}(m),$$
(30)
where each subspace $`(m)`$ has $`J_0^3=m`$ and is finite dimensional. In the following, we will consider each $`(m)`$ space separately, although we will keep the notation $``$.

The space $``$ has a natural grading under $`N_g`$ as

$$=\underset{g}{}_g,$$
(31)
where $`_g`$ has ghost number $`g`$. The action induced by $`Q`$ in each $`_g`$ will de denoted by

$$Q_g:_g_{g+1},$$
(32)
and the following sequence is a graded complex

$$\mathrm{}_{g1}\stackrel{Q_{g1}}{}_g\stackrel{Q_g}{}_{g+1}\mathrm{}.$$
(33)
For each $`g`$ we define the kernel and the image of $`Q`$ as

$`KerQ_g`$ $`=`$ $`\{\xi _g|Q\xi =0\},`$
$`ImQ_g`$ $`=`$ $`\{Q\xi |\xi _g\}.`$ (34)
The cohomology of $`Q`$ in $``$ is then defined as

$$\text{H}=\underset{g}{}\text{H}_g,$$
(35)
with

$$\text{H}_g=\frac{KerQ_g}{ImQ_{g1}}.$$
(36)
Since the indefinite inner product in $``$ is non-degenerate, an orthogonal basis in $``$ can be constructed. Let us define the action of a linear hermitean operator $`𝒞`$ on the states of such a basis as $`1`$ $`(1)`$ if the state has positive (negative) norm. Then for any pair of states $`\xi ,\eta `$ the inner product

$$\xi ,\eta _𝒞\xi ,𝒞\eta ,$$
(37)
is clearly positive definite. The latter implies that $`𝒞`$ maps $`_g`$ into $`_g`$ because the antihermitean character of $`N_g`$ implies that two states can have nonzero $`,`$ inner product only if they have opposite ghost number. Indeed, $`𝒞`$ interchanges the $`b_n`$ and the $`c_n`$ modes of any state (and the $`\beta _n`$ and $`\gamma _n`$ for fermionic strings), as we show explicitly in appendix B. Moreover, this mapping from $`_g`$ to $`_g`$ is a linear isomorphism because each $`_g`$ is finite dimensional and $`𝒞`$ has empty kernel because $`𝒞^2=1`$. Note that the action of $`𝒞`$ is similar to the action of the Hodge $``$ operator on p-forms.

Under this new inner product $`Q`$ is no longer hermitean, but its conjugate $`Q^{}`$ can be obtained from

$$\xi ,Q\eta _𝒞=\xi ,𝒞Q\eta =𝒞Q𝒞\xi ,𝒞\eta =Q^{}\xi ,\eta _𝒞,$$
(38)
where we have used $`𝒞^2=1`$, so we have $`Q^{}=𝒞Q𝒞`$. From its definition it is clear that $`\left(Q^{}\right)^2=0`$ and that $`Q^{}`$ carries ghost number $`1`$ and is hermitean under $`,`$. As for $`Q`$, we will denote by $`Q_g^{}`$ the action of $`Q^{}`$ on $`_g`$.

The positive definiteness of (37) allows us to decompose $`_g`$ both as

$$_g=ImQ_{g1}(ImQ_{g1})^{},$$
(39)
and as

$$_g=ImQ_{g+1}^{}(ImQ_{g+1}^{})^{},$$
(40)
where $`\left(\mathrm{}\right)^{}`$ means orthogonal with respect to $`,_𝒞`$. But, as can be easily checked, we have $`(ImQ_{g+1}^{})^{}=KerQ_g`$ and $`(ImQ_{g1})^{}=KerQ_g^{}`$. Applying now the decomposition (39) to $`KerQ_g`$ we have

$$KerQ_g=ImQ_{g1}_g,$$
(41)
where we have defined

$$_g=KerQ_gKerQ_g^{}.$$
(42)
The elements of $`_g`$ provide us with a unique representative for each cohomology class $`\text{H}_g`$. Indeed, from (42) we see that the elements of $`_g`$ are annihilated by $`Q_g`$, and two representatives of the same class of $`\text{H}_g`$ always differ by an element belonging entirely to the first term of (41). Moreover, it is easy to check (using that $`,_𝒞`$ is positive definite) that a state belongs to $`_g`$ iff it is *harmonic*, i.e., it is annihilated by the *laplacian*

$$\mathrm{\Delta }QQ^{}+Q^{}Q.$$
(43)
Inserting now (41) into (40) we obtain the *Hodge decomposition*

$$_g=ImQ_{g1}ImQ_{g+1}^{}_g.$$
(44)
It is easy to check that the isomorphism between $`_g`$ and $`_g`$ provided by $`𝒞`$ acts on the terms of (44) as

$`𝒞:`$ $`ImQ_gImQ_g^{},`$
$`𝒞:`$ $`_g_g,`$ (45)
and from the second line of (45) we find that the cohomologies $`\text{H}_g`$ and $`\text{H}_g`$ are isomorphic, a result known as *Poincaré duality*.

Now, it is clear that

$$dim_g=dimKerQ_g+dimImQ_g,$$
(46)
and from (41) we have $`dimKerQ_g=dimImQ_{g1}+dim_g`$, which implies

$$dim_g=dim_g+dimImQ_g+dimImQ_{g1}.$$
(47)
Performing an alternating sum of (47) over all $`g`$, the last two terms cancel pairwise and we obtain the *Euler-Poincaré identity*:

$$\underset{g}{}(1)^gdim_g=\underset{g}{}(1)^gdim_g.$$
(48)
### 3.1 The FGZ proof of the no-ghost theorem

The physical space of states is defined to be the $`Q`$ cohomology in $``$. Since the latter is concentrated at zero ghost number, it can be identified with $`_0`$, and the no-ghost theorem asserts that states in $`_0`$ have positive norm under the usual inner product $`,`$.

Note that from the second line of (45) we see that $`𝒞`$ maps $`_0`$ to itself, so it can be diagonalized in $`_0`$ with eigenvalues $`+1`$ or $`1`$ (because $`𝒞^2=1`$), corresponding to states with positive or negative $`,`$ norm, respectively. Calling $`N_+`$ $`(N_{})`$ to the number of $`+1`$ $`(1)`$ eigenvalues, we have

$$dim_0N_+N_{}=Tr__0𝒞,$$
(49)
and it is clear that the no-ghost theorem is proved iff the equality in (49) holds.

The centrality of the vanishing theorem comes now to the fore, since having $`\text{H}_{g0}=0`$ implies, through the Euler-Poincaré identity (48),

$$𝔼\underset{g}{}(1)^gdim_g=\underset{g}{}(1)^gdim_g=dim_0,$$
(50)
where $`𝔼`$ is the *Euler index* of the BRST complex. As for $`Tr__0𝒞`$, notice that the isomorphism (45) under $`𝒞`$ between $`ImQ_1`$ and $`ImQ_1^{}`$ implies

$$Tr_{\{ImQ_1ImQ_1^{}\}}𝒞=0,$$
(51)
so from (44) we have

$$Tr__0𝒞=Tr__0𝒞.$$
(52)
Similarly, the isomorphism under $`𝒞`$ between $`_g`$ and $`_g`$ implies for $`g0`$ that

$$Tr_{\{_g_g\}}𝒞=0,$$
(53)
and from this we obtain

$$𝕊Tr_{}𝒞=Tr_{_g_g}𝒞=Tr__0𝒞,$$
(54)
where $`𝕊`$ is the *signature* of the BRST complex. Putting (49)–(54) together, the no-ghost theorem is equivalent to the identity

$$𝕊=𝔼.$$
(55)
## 4 No-ghost theorem for strings in $`AdS_3`$

We will prove the identity (55) by comparing

$`𝕊(q,z)`$ $`=`$ $`Tr\left(𝒞q^{L_0}z^{J_0^3}\right),`$
$`𝔼(q,t)`$ $`=`$ $`Tr\left((1)^{N_g}q^{L_0}z^{J_0^3}\right),`$ (56)
where the traces will be taken over the different representations. Note that for our purposes the formal expansions in $`z`$ and $`q`$ are of very different nature. Because of the mass shell condition $`L_0=0`$, in the expansion in $`q`$ we are only interested in the term independent of $`q`$.777Note that the condition $`b_0=0`$ (and $`\beta _0=0`$) is already taken into account by just ignoring the degeneracy of the ghost vacuum in the traces (56). On the other hand, we need all the powers of $`z`$, since the decomposition (30) was only done in order to separate $``$ into finite-dimensional subspaces.

In the computation of (56), we will use the fact that the trace is multiplicative under tensor products and additive under direct sums. We will consider representations with arbitrary flow parameter $`w`$, which of course include the regular representations ($`w=0`$).

### 4.1 Bosonic strings

In  it was shown that $`SL(2,)/U(1)`$ representations coming from $`𝒞_{j,\alpha }`$ representations with $`k>2`$, and those coming from $`𝒟_j`$ with $`k>2,j<k/2`$, are unitary. Since these bounds are satisfied in our case, the only source of negative norms are the modes of $`J^3(z)`$. The action of $`𝒞`$ in the $`SL(2,)`$ sector should clearly be

$`𝒞\psi ^\pm (z)𝒞`$ $`=`$ $`\psi ^\pm (z),`$
$`𝒞J_n^3𝒞`$ $`=`$ $`J_n^3.`$ (57)
We decompose $``$ into

$$=_{(b,c)}_{SL(2,)}_𝒩,$$
(58)
and we further decompose the representations of $`_{SL(2,)}`$ as in (25)–(26).

The signature of the $`𝒟_j^w`$ representations can now be computed as

$$𝕊_{𝒟_j^w}(q,z)=𝕊_{(b,c)}(q)\times \underset{n}{}z^{j+n+kw/2}𝕊_{\lambda _{j,n}}(q)𝕊_{𝒰_{j+n+\mathrm{𝑘𝑤}/\mathit{2}}}(q)\times 𝕊_𝒩(q).$$
(59)
The traces in (59) can be computed as follows. In the ghost sector, using the decomposition (93), we have

$$𝕊_{(b,c)}(q)=Tr_{(b,c)}\left(𝒞q^{L_0}\right)=q^1\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(1q^n)(1+q^n).$$
(60)
The signature of the timelike $`U(1)`$ is easily found from (57) to be

$$𝕊_{𝒰_{j+n+\mathrm{𝑘𝑤}/\mathit{2}}}(q)=Tr_{𝒰_{j+n+kw/2}}\left(𝒞q^{L_0}\right)=\frac{q^{\frac{(j+n+kw/2)^2}{k}}}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1+q^n)}.$$
(61)
Since the theories $`SL(2,)/U(1)`$ and $`𝒩`$ are unitary, their signature is their character. So from (59)–(61) the total signature is then

$$𝕊_{𝒟_j^w}(q,z)=q^1\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(1q^n)\times \underset{n}{}q^{\frac{(j+n+kw/2)}{k}^2}z^{j+n+kw/2}\lambda _{j,n}(q)\times Tr_𝒩\left(q^{L_0}\right).$$
(62)
The index of the $`𝒟_j^w`$ representation is

$$𝔼_{𝒟_j^w}(q,t)=𝔼_{(b,c)}(q)Tr_{𝒟_j^w}\left(q^{L_0}z^{J_0^3}\right)Tr_𝒩\left(q^{L_0}\right).$$
(63)
In the ghost sector, decomposing $`_{(b,c)}`$ as

$$_{(b,c)}=\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\{|0_g,b_n|0_g\}\{|0_g,c_n|0_g\},$$
(64)
we have

$$𝔼_{(b,c)}(q)=Tr_{(b,c)}\left((1)^{N_g}q^{L_0}\right)=q^1\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(1q^n)^2,$$
(65)
and the index can be written as

$$𝔼_{𝒟_j^w}=q^1\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(1q^n)^2\times \chi _j^w(q,z)\times Tr_𝒩\left(q^{L_0}\right).$$
(66)
Finally, the equality between (62) and (66) follows immediately from (15) and (26).

Proceeding similarly for the $`𝒞_{j,\alpha }^w`$ representations, we obtain

$`𝕊_{𝒞_{j,\alpha }^w}`$ $`=`$ $`q^1{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1q^n)\times {\displaystyle \underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}q^{\frac{(\alpha +n+kw/2)}{k}^2}z^{\alpha +n+kw/2}\widehat{\lambda }_{j,\alpha +n}(q)\times Tr_𝒩\left(q^{L_0}\right),`$
$`𝔼_{𝒞_{j,\alpha }^w}`$ $`=`$ $`q^1{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1q^n)^2\times \widehat{\chi }_{j,\alpha }^w(q,z)\times Tr_𝒩\left(q^{L_0}\right),`$ (67)
and the equality follows again from (15) and (26).

### 4.2 Fermionic strings

For NSR strings, the computation of the traces is greatly simplified by decomposing the $`AdS_3`$ sector at level $`k`$ into a purely bosonic $`SL(2,)`$ model at level $`k+2`$ and three free fermions $`\psi ^a`$ ($`a=1,2,3`$) (See section 2.3). From (27), we see that the action of $`𝒞`$ on the free fermions is

$$𝒞\psi _n^a𝒞=(1)^{\delta _{a,3}}\psi _n^a(z).$$
(68)
The total Hilbert space $``$ can then be expressed as

$$=_{(b,c)}_{(\beta ,\gamma )}_{SL(2,)}_{\psi ^a}_𝒩.$$
(69)
Note that the traces on $`_{(b,c)}_{SL(2,)}_𝒩`$ can be taken from the above bosonic computation, including there the fermionic sectors of $`𝒩`$. We will compute the traces for $`𝒟_j^w`$ representations, the $`𝒞_{j,\alpha }^w`$ case being identical.

#### Neveu-Schwarz sector.

Using the decomposition (97), and (68), we find

$`𝕊_{(\beta ,\gamma )}(q)`$ $`=`$ $`Tr_{(\beta ,\gamma )}\left(𝒞q^{L_0}\right)={\displaystyle \underset{r=\frac{1}{2}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{q^{\frac{1}{2}}}{(1q^r)(1+q^r)}},`$ (70)
$`𝕊_{\psi ^a}(q)`$ $`=`$ $`Tr_{\psi ^a}\left(𝒞q^{L_0}\right)={\displaystyle \underset{r=\frac{1}{2}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1q^r)(1+q^r)^2.`$ (71)
The total signature is then,

$$𝕊^{NS}(q,z)=𝕊_{𝒟_j^w}(q,z)𝕊_{(\beta ,\gamma )}(q)𝕊_{\psi ^a}(q)=q^{\frac{1}{2}}\times 𝕊_{𝒟_j^w}(q,z)\times \underset{r=\frac{1}{2}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(1+q^r).$$
(72)
To find $`𝔼_{(\beta ,\gamma )}`$, we decompose

$$_{(\beta ,\gamma )}=\underset{r=1/2}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{N_r=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left\{\beta _r^{N_r}|0_g\right\}\underset{r=1/2}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{N_r=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\left\{\gamma _r^{N_r}|0_g\right\},$$
(73)
and then

$$𝔼_{(\beta ,\gamma )}(q)=Tr_{(\beta ,\gamma )}\left((1)^{N_g}q^{L_0}\right)=\underset{r=\frac{1}{2}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{q^{\frac{1}{2}}}{(1+q^r)^2}.$$
(74)
We also need

$$Tr_{\psi ^a}\left(q^{L_0}\right)=\underset{r=\frac{1}{2}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(1+q^r)^3.$$
(75)
So the total index is

$$𝔼^{NS}(q,z)=𝔼_{𝒟_j^w}(q,z)𝔼_{(\beta ,\gamma )}(q)Tr_{\psi ^a}\left(q^{L_0}\right)=q^{\frac{1}{2}}\times 𝔼_{𝒟_j^w}(q,z)\times \underset{r=\frac{1}{2}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(1+q^r).$$
(76)
The equality between (72) and (76) follows then from the bosonic results.

#### Ramond sector.

The traces are computed similarly, giving for the signatures

$`𝕊_{(\beta ,\gamma )}(q)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{q^{\frac{3}{8}}}{(1q^r)(1+q^r)}},`$ (77)
$`𝕊_{\psi ^a}(q)`$ $`=`$ $`q^{\frac{3}{16}}\times {\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1q^r)(1+q^r)^2,`$ (78)
and

$$𝕊^R(q,z)=𝕊_{𝒟_j^w}(q,z)𝕊_{(\beta ,\gamma )}(q)𝕊_{\psi ^a}(q)=q^{\frac{9}{16}}\times 𝕊_{𝒟_j^w}(q,z)\times \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(1+q^r).$$
(79)
For the computation of the index, we obtain

$`𝔼_{(\beta ,\gamma )}(q)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{q^{\frac{3}{8}}}{(1+q^r)^2}},`$ (80)
$`Tr_{\psi ^a}\left(q^{L_0}\right)`$ $`=`$ $`q^{\frac{3}{16}}\times {\displaystyle \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(1+q^r)^3,`$ (81)
and

$$𝔼^R(q,z)=𝔼_{𝒟_j^w}(q,z)𝔼_{(\beta ,\gamma )}(q)Tr_{\psi ^a}\left(q^{L_0}\right)=q^{\frac{9}{16}}\times 𝔼_{𝒟_j^w}(q,z)\times \underset{r=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(1+q^r).$$
(82)
The equality between (79) and (82) follows again from the bosonic results.

Notice that for the computation of $`𝕊`$ in the fermionic case, we have relied on the unitarity of the bosonic $`SL(2,)/U(1)`$ coset, and we did not need the unitarity of the supersymmetric coset, as in the OCQ . This is related to the fact that with the FGZ method we bypass the building of the physical states themselves, which do belong to the *supersymmetric* coset, modulo spurious states.

## 5 Discussion

The applicability of the FGZ method depends on two points. The first is expressing (a sector of) the matter chiral algebra as a free $`L_{}`$-Virasoro module. This should be checked in each case, although the techniques of  can be adapted or adopted for a wide family of backgrounds.

The second point is having enough control over the representations of the worldsheet CFT, so as to compute the traces (56). Based on the results for $`AdS_3\times 𝒩`$, several related exact CFT backgrounds could be dealt with successfully. In particular, the BTZ black hole  (an orbifold of $`AdS_3`$), the non-compact spaces studied in  and pp-waves backgrounds, obtained as Penrose limits of $`AdS_3\times S^3\times M^4`$ (see  and references therein).

An additional class of related backgrounds are gauged WZW models including an $`SL(2,)`$ factor, such as the lorentzian 2D black hole  ($`=SL(2,)/U(1)`$), the cosmological Nappi-Witten model  ($`=SL(2,)\times SU(2)/U(1)^2`$) and the generalization of the latter studied in . These backgrounds are particularly interesting, because although the matter $``$ CFT (the relative cohomology of the BRST complex in the gauged WZW model) contains negative-normed states, it cannot be decomposed as $`U(1)\times /U(1)`$. Here we can use to advantage the cohomological analysis of gauged WZW models in , which show that a vanishing theorem holds in $`G/H`$ (for certain subgroups $`H`$). This allows to compute $`𝕊`$ and $`𝔼`$ on $`G/H`$ by taking the traces over $`G_{\mathrm{ghosts}}H`$, and following a chain of identities similar to those in (50) and (54). In this way, as we did in this work, the flowed sectors of the $`SL(2,)`$ factor in G can be included. This will be worked out in detail in a future work.

###### Acknowledgments.

I thank for discussions G. d’Appolonio, S. Elitzur, A. Giveon, D. Kazhdan, B. Kol, A. Konechny, B. Pioline, P.A.G. Pisani, A. Sever and B. Zwiebach, and especially J.M. Figueroa-O’Farrill. I also thank P.A.G. Pisani for collaboration at the early stages of this work. This work is supported in part by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities — Centers of Excellence Program, the German-Israel Bi-National Science Foundation, and the European RTN network HPRN-CT-2000-00122.

#### Note added.

After this paper appeared in hep-th, the work  appeared, where the methods of  are applied to $`AdS_3\times 𝒩`$ backgrounds.

## Appendix A BRST essentials

We review here the basics of the $`(b,c)`$ and $`(\beta ,\gamma )`$ algebra that we need in this work. More details can be found in . The zero-mode quantization has some subtleties, which have been discussed, *inter alia*, in .

### A.1 Bosonic strings

The anticommuting $`(b,c)`$ reparametrization ghosts, with conformal dimensions $`(2,1)`$, have the OPEs

$`b(z)c(w)`$ $``$ $`c(z)b(w){\displaystyle \frac{1}{zw}},`$
$`b(z)b(w)`$ $``$ $`c(z)c(w)\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}.`$ (83)
The ghost number operator is defined as

$`N_g`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑zb(z)c(z)},`$ (84)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}\left(c_nb_nb_nc_n\right)+c_0b_0{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}.`$
The ordering constant $`1/2`$ can be fixed in several ways , the most immediate one being the requirement of $`N_g`$ being antihermitean, i.e., $`N_g^{}=N_g`$. For this we use $`b_n^{}=b_n`$, $`c_n^{}=c_n`$.

The charge of the $`(bc)`$ modes under $`N_g`$ is

$`[N_g,b_m]`$ $`=`$ $`b_m,`$
$`[N_g,c_m]`$ $`=`$ $`+c_m.`$ (85)
The zero modes $`b_0`$, $`c_0`$ satisfy the Clifford algebra $`\{b_0,c_0\}=1`$, so there is a double-degenerate vacuum $`|`$, $`|`$, which satisfies

$`c_0|`$ $`=`$ $`|b_0|=|,`$
$`c_0|`$ $`=`$ $`b_0|=c_n|,=b_n|,=0,n>0.`$ (86)
On the vacua $`|`$, $`|`$ we have $`L_0^{(b,c)}=1`$. The zero-modes algebra implies that the inner product on the ghost space is consistently defined by

$`|c_0|`$ $`=`$ $`|c_0|=1,`$
$`|c_0|`$ $`=0,`$ (87)
and from this follows the inner product of any excited state.

The BRST charge

$$Q=𝑑zc(z)\left(T^M(z)+\frac{1}{2}T^{(b,c)}(z)\right),$$
(88)
is an hermitean operator which carries ghost number $`+1`$, and $`Q^2=0`$ if $`c_M=26`$. Here $`T^M`$ is the matter stress tensor. In this work we consider the restriction to the space $``$ defined by $`b_0=L_0=0`$, where $`L_0`$ is the zero mode of $`T=T^M+T^{(b,c)}`$. This chooses the $`|`$ vacuum, which will be denoted $`|0_g`$. In $``$ we redefine $`N_g`$ to be in $``$ by assigning ghost number $`0`$ to $`|0_g`$ and ignoring the last two terms in the expansion (84). The action of $`Q`$ is consistent with the restriction to $``$ because $`\{Q,b_0\}=L_0`$.

### A.2 Fermionic strings

For NSR strings, we have, on top of the $`(b,c)`$ system, the super-reparametrization ghosts $`(\beta ,\gamma )`$, with conformal dimensions $`(3/2,1/2)`$ and OPEs

$`\gamma (z)\beta (w)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{zw}},`$
$`\beta (z)\gamma (w)`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{zw}},`$
$`\beta (z)\beta (w)`$ $``$ $`\gamma (z)\gamma (w)\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}.`$ (89)
The modes of $`(\beta ,\gamma )`$ satisfy $`\beta _r^{}=\beta _r`$, $`\gamma _r^{}=\gamma _r`$, where $`r`$ ($`r+1/2`$) for the Ramond (Neveu-Schwarz) sector. In the Ramond sector, the zero modes again make the vacuum double-degenerate. We choose $`\beta _0=0`$ in $``$, and denote the selected vacuum also by $`|0_g`$. We have then,

$$\beta _{r0}|0_g=\gamma _{r>0}|0_g=0.$$
(90)
On $`|0_g`$, we have $`L_0^{(\beta ,\gamma )}=3/8`$ ($`L_0^{(\beta ,\gamma )}=1/2`$) for the Ramond (Neveu-Schwarz) sector. The $`|0_g`$ ghost number is zero, and the operator $`N_g`$ in (84) is extended to satisfy

$`[N_g,\beta _r]`$ $`=`$ $`\beta _r,`$
$`[N_g,\gamma _r]`$ $`=`$ $`+\gamma _r.`$ (91)
The BRST charge is now

$$Q=𝑑z\left[c(z)\left(T^M(z)+\frac{1}{2}T^g(z)\right)+\gamma (z)\left(G^M(z)+\frac{1}{2}G^g(z)\right)\right],$$
(92)
with $`Q^2=0`$ if $`c_M=10`$. Here $`G^M`$ is the matter supercurrent, $`T^g=T^{(b,c)}+T^{(\beta ,\gamma )}`$ and $`G^g`$ the supercurrent of the superconformal combined $`(b,c)(\beta ,\gamma )`$ systems. The $`L_0=0`$ condition is imposed with $`T^M+T^g`$. The space $``$ is again defined by $`b_0=L_0=0`$. In the Ramond sector, also by $`\beta _0=G_0=0`$, where $`G_0`$ is the zero mode of $`G=G^M+G^g`$. This restriction is consistent because $`\{Q,\beta _0\}=G_0`$.

## Appendix B The action of $`𝒞`$ in the ghost sector

In this appendix we will show that the operator $`𝒞`$, defined in section 2, interchanges between $`b_n`$ and $`c_n`$ (and $`\beta _r`$ and $`\gamma _r`$) modes, thus mapping $`_g`$ to $`_g`$.

We can decompose the ghost sector $`_{(b,c)}`$ into

$$_{(b,c)}=\underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\{|0_g,|+,n\}\{|0_g,|,n\},$$
(93)
where

$$|\pm ,n\frac{(b_n\pm c_n)}{\sqrt{2}}|0_g,$$
(94)
satisfy

$`\pm ,n|\pm ,m`$ $`=`$ $`\pm \delta _{n,m},`$
$`+,n|,m`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (95)
so from $`𝒞|\pm ,m=\pm |\pm ,m`$ we have

$`𝒞c_n𝒞`$ $`=`$ $`b_n,`$
$`𝒞b_n𝒞`$ $`=`$ $`c_n.`$ (96)
For fermionic strings, we use the decomposition

$$_{(\beta ,\gamma )}=\underset{r>0}{}\underset{N_r=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\{|+,N_r\}\underset{r>0}{}\underset{N_r=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\{|,N_r\},$$
(97)
where

$$|\pm ,N_r\frac{(\beta _r\pm \gamma _r)^{N_r}}{\sqrt{2N_r!}}|0_g,$$
(98)
satisfy

$`\pm ,N_r|\pm ,N_s`$ $`=`$ $`(\pm 1)^{N_r}\delta _{r,s}\delta _{N_r,N_s},`$
$`+,N_r|,N_s`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (99)
so we have

$`𝒞\beta _r𝒞`$ $`=`$ $`(1)^{S(r)}\gamma _r,`$
$`𝒞\gamma _r𝒞`$ $`=`$ $`(1)^{S(r)}\beta _r,`$ (100)
where $`S(r)`$ equals $`0(1)`$ if $`r<0(r>0)`$.

## Appendix C $`SL(2,)/U(1)\times U(1)`$ character decomposition

In this appendix we will prove explicitly the character decompositions (14) and (26). Let us start with the representation $`𝒟_j^+`$, whose character is

$$\chi _j^+(q,z)=\frac{q^{\frac{j(j1)}{k2}}z^j}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)(1q^{n1}z)(1q^nz^1)}.$$
(101)
We will use the technique of infinite partial fractions, which has been used in  in order to prove similar identities. Define

$$f_N(q,z)=\frac{1}{_{n=1}^N\left(1q^{n1}z\right)\left(1q^nz^1\right)},$$
(102)
which can be decomposed into partial fractions as

$$f_N(q,z)=\underset{k=1}{\overset{N}{}}\frac{a_k(q)}{(1q^{k1}z)(1q^kz^1)}.$$
(103)
The coefficients $`a_k(q)`$ are

$`a_k(q)`$ $`=`$ $`\underset{zq^k}{lim}(1q^{k1}z)(1q^kz^1)f_N(q,z),`$ (104)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1q^{2k1}}{_{n=k}^{N+k1}(1q^n)_{n=1nk}^N(1q^{nk})}},`$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(1q^{2k1})(1)^{k1}q^{\frac{k(k1)}{2}}}{_{n=1}^{N+k1}(1q^n)_{n=1}^{Nk}(1q^n)}},`$
thus for $`N\mathrm{}`$ we have

$`\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}f_N(q,z)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^{n1}z)(1q^nz^1)}},`$ (105)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)^2}}\left[{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(1q^{2k1})(1)^{k1}q^{\frac{k(k1)}{2}}}{(1q^{k1}z)(1q^kz^1)}}\right].`$
The denominators in the sum of (105) can be expanded and resummed as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(1q^{k1}z)(1q^kz^1)}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{m,n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}q^{m(k1)}z^mq^{nk}z^n,`$ (106)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(1q^{2k1})}}\left[{\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}q^{n(k1)}z^n+{\displaystyle \underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{1}{}}}q^{nk}z^n\right].`$
Thus (105) can be written as

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^{n1}z)(1q^nz^1)}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)^2}}\times `$ (107)
$`\times [{\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}z^n(1)^{k1}q^{\frac{1}{2}(k+2n)(k1)}+`$
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{1}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{k=12n}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}z^n(1)^{k1}q^{\frac{1}{2}(k+2n)(k1)}],`$
where in the second term we have changed the index $`k`$ to $`k+2n`$ in order to make the exponents of $`q`$ be the same in both terms. Now, using that for $`n^{}`$

$$\underset{k=1}{\overset{2n}{}}(1)^{k1}q^{\frac{1}{2}(k+2n)(k1)}=0,$$
(108)
and changing the index $`k`$ to $`s=k1`$ we obtain finally

$$\frac{1}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^{n1}z)(1q^nz^1)}=\frac{1}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)^2}\underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\underset{s=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}z^n(1)^sq^{\frac{1}{2}s(s+2n+1)},$$
(109)
and multiplying both sides by $`q^{\frac{j(j1)}{k2}}z^j_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)^1`$, the first line of (14) follows.

From (22), we see that the flowed characters can be obtained from $`\chi _j^+(q,z)`$ by replacing $`zzq^w`$, and multiplying the resulting expression by $`z^{kw/2}q^{kw^2/4}`$. So we have,

$`\chi _j^w(q,z)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{q^{\frac{j(j1)}{k2}kw^2/4}z^{kw/2}}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)^3}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{s=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(zq^w)^{n+j}(1)^sq^{\frac{1}{2}s(s+2n+1)},`$ (110)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{q^{\frac{j(j1)}{k2}}z^{j+kw/2}}{_{n=1}^{\mathrm{}}(1q^n)^3}}{\displaystyle \underset{n=\mathrm{}}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{s=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}q^{\frac{(j+n)^2}{k}\frac{(j+n+kw/2)^2}{k}}z^n(1)^sq^{\frac{1}{2}s(s+2n+1)},`$
and this identity is the first line of (26).

The decompositions for $`𝒞_{j,\alpha }`$ representations are immediate and are left as an exercise.