Worldlines on Orbifolds and the Fayet-Iliopoulos Term

Abstract

We adapt ``string-inspired'' worldline techniques to one-loop calculations on orbifolds, in particular on the $S^1/Z_2$ orbifold. Our method also allows for the treatment of brane-localized terms, or bulk-brane couplings. For demonstration, we reproduce the well-known result for the one-loop induced Fayet-Iliopoulos term in rigidly supersymmetric Abelian gauge theory, and generalize it to the case where soft supersymmetry breaking mass terms for the bulk scalar fields are present on the branes.

Comments: Typos corrected, clarifying remarks added