Notes on the D = 11 pure spinor superparticle

Abstract

Abstract The D = 11 pure spinor superparticle has been shown to describe linearized D = 11supergravityinamanifestlycovariantway. Anumberofauthorshaveproposedthat its correlation functions be used to compute amplitudes. The use of the scalar structure of the eleven-dimensional pure spinor top cohomology introduces a natural measure for computing such correlation functions. This prescription requires the construction of ghost number one and zero vertex operators. In these notes, we construct explicitly a ghost number one vertex operator but show the incompatibiliy of a ghost number zero vertex operator satisfying a standard descent equation for D = 11 supergravity.