Perturbative and Non-perturbative N =8 Supergravity
Abstract
We study extremal black holes, their ADM mass and area of the horizon in N = 8 supergravity. Contrary to intuition gained from N = 2, 4 theories, in N = 8 supergravity BPS states may become massless only at the boundary of moduli space. We show that stringy states described in [1], which have no mass gap and survive in the toroidal compactification in addition to massless states of perturbative N = 8 supergravity, display a null singularity in four-dimensional space-time, when viewed as solutions of N = 8 Einstein equations. We analyze known methods of resolving such singularities and explain why they do not work in D=4, N = 8 supergravity. We discuss possible implications for the issue of UV finiteness of the four-dimensional N = 8 perturbation theory.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0910.3674,
title = {Perturbative and Non-perturbative N =8 Supergravity},
author = {Massimo Bianchi and Sergio Ferrara and Renata Kallosh},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0910.3674},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
5p, few corrections and improvements, references added, published in Physics Letters