Tree scattering amplitudes of the spin-4/3 fractional superstring. I. The untwisted sectors

Scattering amplitudes of the spin-4/3 fractional superstring are shown to satisfy spurious state decoupling and cyclic symmetry (duality) at the tree level in the string perturbation expansion. This fractional superstring is characterized by the spin-4/3 fractional superconformal algebra—a parafermionic algebra studied by Zamolodchikov and Fateev involving chiral spin-4/3 currents on the world sheet in addition to the stress-energy tensor. Examples of tree scattering amplitudes are calculated in an explicit c=5 representation of this fractional superconformal algebra realized in terms of free bosons on the string world sheet. The target space of this model is three-dimensional flat Minkowski space-time with a level-2 Kač-Moody so(2,1) internal symmetry, and has bosons and fermions in its spectrum. Its closed string version contains a graviton in its spectrum. Tree-level unitarity (i.e., the no-ghost theorem for space-time bosonic physical states) can be shown for this model. Since the critical central charge of the spin-4/3 fractional superstring theory is 10, this c=6 representation cannot be consistent at the string loop level. The existence of a critical fractional superstring containing a four-dimensional space-time remains an open question.