English

Uniqueness of $\mathcal{N}=2$ and $3$ pure supergravities in 4D

High Energy Physics - Theory 2018-12-17 v2

Abstract

After proving the impossibility of consistent non-minimal coupling of a real Rarita-Schwinger gauge field to electromagnetism, we re-derive the necessity of introducing the graviton in order to couple a complex Rarita-Schwinger gauge field to electromagnetism, with or without a cosmological term, thereby obtaining N=2{\cal N}=2 pure supergravity as the only possibility. These results are obtained with the BRST-BV deformation method around the flat and (A)dS backgrounds in 4 dimensions. The same method applied to nvn_{v} vectors, N{\cal N} real spin-3/2 gauge fields and at most one real spinor field also requires gravity and yields N=3{\cal N}=3 pure supergravity as well as N=1{\cal N}=1 pure supergravity coupled to a vector supermultiplet, with or without cosmological terms. Independently from the matter content, we finally derive strong necessary quadratic constraints on the possible gaugings for an arbitrary number of spin-1 and spin-3/2 gauge fields, that are relevant for larger supergravities.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1802.02966,
  title  = {Uniqueness of $\mathcal{N}=2$ and $3$ pure supergravities in 4D},
  author = {Nicolas Boulanger and Bernard Julia and Lucas Traina},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.02966},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

LaTeX, 31 + 1 pages, no figure. v2: Extended discussion at the end of Section 3, corrected typos and references added