Conformal Moduli and b-c Pictures for NSR Strings

We explore the geometry of the superconformal moduli of the NSR superstring theory in order to construct the consistent sigma-model for the NSR strings, free of picture-changing ambiguities. The sigma-model generating functional is constructed by the integration over the bosonic and anticommuting moduli, corresponding to insertions of the vertex operators in scattering amplitudes. In particular, the integration over the bosonic moduli results in the appearance of picture-changing operators for the b-c system. Important example of the b-c pictures involves the unintegrated and integrated forms of the vertex operators. We derive the BRST-invariant expressions for the b-c picture-changing operators for open and closed strings and study some of their properties. We also show that the superconformal moduli spaces of the NSR superstring theory contain the global singularities, leading to the appearance of non-perturbative solitonic D-brane creation operators.