Quantcast
  • Register
PhysicsOverflow is a next-generation academic platform for physicists and astronomers, including a community peer review system and a postgraduate-level discussion forum analogous to MathOverflow.

Welcome to PhysicsOverflow! PhysicsOverflow is an open platform for community peer review and graduate-level Physics discussion.

Please help promote PhysicsOverflow ads elsewhere if you like it.

News

PO is now at the Physics Department of Bielefeld University!

New printer friendly PO pages!

Migration to Bielefeld University was successful!

Please vote for this year's PhysicsOverflow ads!

Please do help out in categorising submissions. Submit a paper to PhysicsOverflow!

... see more

Tools for paper authors

Submit paper
Claim Paper Authorship

Tools for SE users

Search User
Reclaim SE Account
Request Account Merger
Nativise imported posts
Claim post (deleted users)
Import SE post

Users whose questions have been imported from Physics Stack Exchange, Theoretical Physics Stack Exchange, or any other Stack Exchange site are kindly requested to reclaim their account and not to register as a new user.

Public \(\beta\) tools

Report a bug with a feature
Request a new functionality
404 page design
Send feedback

Attributions

(propose a free ad)

Site Statistics

206 submissions , 164 unreviewed
5,103 questions , 2,249 unanswered
5,355 answers , 22,797 comments
1,470 users with positive rep
820 active unimported users
More ...

  Clarifying the role of the mysterious space underlying the definition of a superspace

+ 1 like - 0 dislike
853 views

In the intro to chapter 12.3 of this book about the applications of coherent states, it says that

classical spaces for bosons are real or complex vector spaces or manifolds, whereas classical spaces for fermions are Grassmann algebras $\mathbb{K}[\theta_1, ... ,\theta_n], \mathbb{K}=\mathbb{R}$ or $\mathbb{C}$.
More precisely the classical space for fermions is given by the space of smooth
mappings $f$ from $B$, a certain set of dimension $0$, to the Grassmann
algebra $\mathbb{K}[\theta]$

$$
f: B \rightarrow \mathbb{K}[\theta]
$$

What exactly is the role of this ominous space $B$ in this definition? Why is it even needed, why can one not directly work with the Grassmann algebra for the fermionic part of superspace?

As an example, for a system with $n$ bosons and $m$ fermions (or $n$ bosonic and $m$
fermionic coordinates? The bosons and fermions should be obtained as the coefficients
when expanding a superfield in the Grassmann coordinates!) the configuration
space is called a superspace $\mathbb{R}^{n|m}$ and is defined as

$$C^{\infty}(\mathbb{R}^{n|m})
=C^{\infty}(\mathbb{R}^n)[\theta_1, ... ,\theta_n]
=C^{\infty}(\mathbb{R}^n)\otimes \mathcal G_m
$$
where $\mathcal G_m$ is the fermionic part parameterized by $n$ Grassmann variables $\theta_i$.

Does $\mathbb{R}^{n|m}$ here take the role of the space $B$ that was rather abstractly alluded to above?

asked Mar 31, 2017 in Mathematics by Dilaton (6,240 points) [ revision history ]
edited Apr 1, 2017 by Dilaton

Your answer

Please use answers only to (at least partly) answer questions. To comment, discuss, or ask for clarification, leave a comment instead.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.
This is the answer box; if you want to write a comment instead, please use the 'add comment' button.
Live preview (may slow down editor)   Preview
Your name to display (optional):
Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.
Anti-spam verification:
If you are a human please identify the position of the character covered by the symbol $\varnothing$ in the following word:
p$\hbar\varnothing$sicsOverflow
Then drag the red bullet below over the corresponding character of our banner. When you drop it there, the bullet changes to green (on slow internet connections after a few seconds).
Please complete the anti-spam verification




user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required

Your rights
...