BRST OPERATORS FOR HIGHER-SPIN ALGEBRAS Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • In this paper, we construct non-critical BRST operators for matter and Liouville systems whose currents generate two different W algebras. At the classical level, we construct the BRST operators for W2,sm W2,sl. The construction is possible for s = s or s s + 2. We also obtain the BRST operator for W2,4m W4l at the classical level. We use free scalar realisations for the matter currents in the above constructions. At the full quantum level, we obtain the BRST operators for W2,sm W2l with s = 4,5,6, where W2 denotes the Virasoro algebra. For the first and last cases, the BRST operators are expressed in terms of abstract matter and Liouville currents. As a by-product, we obtain the W2,4 algebra at c = -24 and the W2,6 algebra at c = -2 and -286 3, at which values the algebras were previously believed not to exist. 1995.

published proceedings

  • PHYSICS LETTERS B

author list (cited authors)

  • LU, H., POPE, C. N., & XU, K. W.

citation count

  • 2

complete list of authors

  • LU, H||POPE, CN||XU, KW

publication date

  • September 1995