Supercurves

The TST-dual of the general 1/4-supersymmetric D2-brane supertube is identified as a 1/4-supersymmetric IIA ‘supercurve’: a string with arbitrary transverse displacement travelling at the speed of light. A simple proof is given of the classical upper bound on the angular momentum, which is also recovered as the semi-classical limit of a quantum bound. The classical bound is saturated by a ‘superhelix’, while the quantum bound is saturated by a bosonic oscillator state in a unique SO(8) representation.