Notes on reductions of superstring theory to bosonic string theory

Abstract

It is in general very subtle to integrate over the odd moduli of super Riemann surfaces in perturbative superstring computations. We study how these subtleties go away in favorable cases, including the embedding of N=0 string to N=1 string by Berkovits and Vafa, and the relation of the graviphoton amplitude and the topological string amplitude by Antoniadis, Gava, Narain and Taylor and Bershadsky, Cecotti, Ooguri and Vafa. The Poincaré dual of the moduli space of Riemann surfaces in the moduli space of super Riemann surfaces plays an important role.

20 pages, v3: additional discussions using PCOs, published version