Currently I am studying string theory and I encountered a bunch of interrelated problems in the context of BRST quantization which I can't solve for myself although I tried hard for some days.
My question concerns the BRST transformation of the bosonic string in eq. (4.3.1) of Polchinski's book. In the paragraph following these transformations, Polchinski says that "the reader can check nilpotence up to the equations of motion". I tried but wasn't able to complete the proof - here my calculations:
δBδ′BXμ=δB[iε′(c∂Xμ+ˉcˉ∂Xμ)]=iε′[(δBc)∂Xμ+c(δB∂Xμ)+(δBˉc)∂Xμ+ˉc(δBˉ∂Xμ)]=iε′[(iεc∂c)∂Xμ+c(iε(c∂∂Xμ+ˉcˉ∂∂Xμ⏟=0))+(iεˉcˉ∂ˉc)ˉ∂Xμ+ˉc(iε(c∂ˉ∂Xμ⏟=0+ˉcˉ∂ˉ∂Xμ))]=−ε′[εc∂c∂Xμ+cεc∂∂Xμ+εˉcˉ∂ˉcˉ∂Xμ+ˉcεˉcˉ∂ˉ∂Xμ]=−ε′ε[c∂c∂Xμ−cc⏟=0∂∂Xμ+ˉcˉ∂ˉcˉ∂Xμ−ˉcˉc⏟=0ˉ∂ˉ∂Xμ]=−ε′ε[c∂c∂Xμ+ˉcˉ∂ˉcˉ∂Xμ]=?
Here I used the equation of motion for the field Xμ and exploited c2=0=ˉc2. At this point, however, I do not see why the remaining terms should vanish.
Answer
Hint: The infinitesimal BRST transformation δB(F[X,c,…]) := F[X+δBX,c+δBc,…]−F[X,c,…]
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