Antiperiodic boundary conditions in supersymmetric discrete light cone quantization - art. no. 087701

It is of considerable importance to have a numerical method for solving sup ersymmetric theories that can support a non-zero central charge. The centra l charge in supersymmetric theories is in general a boundary integral and t herefore vanishes when one uses periodic boundary conditions. One is theref ore prevented from studying BPS states in the standard supersymmetric formu lation of DLCQ (SDLCQ). We present a novel formulation of SDLCQ where the f ields satisfy antiperiodic boundary conditions. The Hamiltonian is written as the anti-commutator of two charges, as in SDLCQ. The antiperiodic SDLCQ we consider breaks supersymmetry at finite resolution, but requires no reno rmalization and becomes supersymmetric in the continuum limit. In principle , this method could be used to study BPS states. However, we find its conve rgence to be disappointingly slow.