English

The complete action for $\mathcal{N}=2$ de Sitter pure supergravity

High Energy Physics - Theory 2026-01-30 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Supergravity theories in de Sitter spacetime are known to be very constrained, and rather unnatural within String/M Theory. We revisit the seminal paper by Pilch, van Nieuwenhuizen and Sohnius, where the possible existence of a real Lagrangian for N=2{\cal N}=2 pure supergravity in four-dimensional de Sitter spacetime was pointed out. We clarify several issues related to the non-unitarity of the theory and explicitly construct the unique, complete theory searched for long ago by the aforementioned authors. We argue that the lack of unitarity of the Lorentzian theory may be revisited in the Euclidean approach to de Sitter quantum gravity, where alternative definitions of unitarity can be introduced.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.16891,
  title  = {The complete action for $\mathcal{N}=2$ de Sitter pure supergravity},
  author = {Nicolas Boulanger and Vasileios A. Letsios and Sylvain Thomée},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.16891},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

16 pages, 10 pages + appendices, no figures, references added, typos corrected

R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:17:36.763Z