Two-loop superstrings II: The chiral measure on moduli space Original Research Article

A detailed derivation from first principles is given for the unambiguous and slice-independent formula for the two-loop superstring chiral measure which was announced in the first paper of this series. Supergeometries are projected onto their superperiod matrices, and the integration over odd supermoduli is performed by integrating over the fibers of this projection. The subtleties associated with this procedure are identified. They require the inclusion of some new finite-dimensional Jacobian superdeterminants, a deformation of the worldsheet correlation functions using the stress tensor, and perhaps paradoxically, another additional gauge choice, “slice μ̂ choice”, whose independence also has to be established. This is done using an important correspondence between superholomorphic notions with respect to a supergeometry and holomorphic notions with respect to its superperiod matrix. Altogether, the subtleties produce precisely the corrective terms which restore the independence of the resulting gauge-fixed formula under infinitesimal changes of gauge-slice. This independence is a key criterion for any gauge-fixed formula and hence is verified in detail.