Superspace geometry of fermionic strings

Abstract

We calculate the effective action in Polyakov's fermionic-string theory in a manifestly supersymmetric formalism, including the effects of string boundaries. Supersymmetry causes divergence cancellations such that no Liouville interaction term is generated by renormalization of the string fields. For open surfaces, supersymmetry is spontaneously broken by the presence of the boundary, leading to a linear divergence proportional to the length of the boundary.