Y-formalism and b ghost in the non-minimal pure spinor formalism of superstrings Original Research Article

We present the Y-formalism for the non-minimal pure spinor quantization of superstrings. In the framework of this formalism we compute, at the quantum level, the explicit form of the compound operators involved in the construction of the b ghost, their normal-ordering contributions and the relevant relations among them. We use these results to construct the quantum-mechanical b ghost in the non-minimal pure spinor formalism. Moreover we show that this non-minimal b ghost is cohomologically equivalent to the non-covariant b ghost.