Related papers: A magic pyramid of supergravities
Twisted four-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory famously gives a useful point of view on the Donaldson and Seiberg-Witten invariants of four-manifolds. In this paper we generalize the construction to include a path integral…
In these lectures we review how the symmetries of gravitational theories may be regarded as originating from those of "Yang-Mills squared". We begin by motivating the idea that certain aspects of gravitational theories can be captured by…
The (4,0) supermultiplet in 6 dimensions contains a 4th rank tensor gauge field with the symmetries of the Riemann tensor and is superconformal, with 32+32 supersymmetries. Dimensional reduction on a circle gives the 5D N=8 supergravity…
We discuss the options for parity assignments in (on-shell) N=2 five-dimensional Yang-Mills-Einstein supergravity theories (YMESGTs) coupled to tensor and hypermultiplets on the orbifold spacetime M_4 X S^1/Z_2. Along the lines of…
We study the gravitational duals of $d$-dimensional Yang-Mills theories with $d\leq 6$ in the presence of an ${\cal O} (N^2)$ density of heavy quarks, with $N$ the number of colors. For concreteness we focus on maximally supersymmetric…
This contribution gives a personal view on recent attempts to find a unified framework for non-perturbative string theories, with special emphasis on the hidden symmetries of supergravity and their possible role in this endeavor. A…
We give a formulation of linearized 11D supergravity in 4D, $N=1$ superspace keeping all eleven bosonic coordinates. The fields are fluctuations around $\mathbf M=\mathbf R^{4|4}\times Y$, where $Y$ is a background Riemannian 7-manifold…
We conjecture that $W$ gravity can be interpreted as the gauge theory of $\phi$ diffeomorphisms in the space of dimensionally-reduced $D=2+2$ $SU^*(\infty)$ Yang-Mills instantons. These $\phi$ diffeomorphisms preserve a volume-three form…
We show by explicit construction the existence of various four dimensional models of type II superstrings with N=2 supersymmetry, purely vector multiplet spectrum and no hypermultiplets. Among these, two are of special interest, at the…
This paper is concerned with the description of exceptional simple Lie algebras as octonionic analogues of the classical matrix Lie algebras. We review the Tits-Freudenthal construction of the magic square, which includes the exceptional…
We consider an abelian N=4 super Yang-Mills theory coupled to background N=4 conformal supergravity fields. At the classical level, this coupling is invariant under global SU(1,1) transformation of the complex ("dilaton-axion") supergravity…
We study the classical geometry associated to fractional D3-branes of type IIB string theory on R^4/Z_2 which provide the gravitational dual for N=2 super Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions. As one can expect from the lack of conformal…
In $D=4$, $\cal{N}=1$ conformal superspace, the Yang-Mills matter coupled supergravity system is constructed where the Yang-Mills gauge interaction is introduced by extending the superconformal group to include the K\"ahler isometry group…
It is known that black hole charge vectors of N=8 and magic N=2 supergravity in four and five dimensions can be represented as elements of Jordan algebras of degree three over the octonions and split-octonions and their Freudenthal triple…
We develop a four-dimensional gauge-gravity unification based on the $% SL(2N,C)$ gauge theory taken in a universal Yang--Mills type setting. The accompanying tetrads are promoted to dynamical fields whose length, when projected onto the…
We present some multiplets of N=2 off-shell supergravity in five dimensions. One is the Super Yang-Mills multiplet, another one is the linear multiplet. The latter one is used to establish a general action formula from which we derive an…
Color/kinematics duality and the double-copy construction have proved to be systematic tools for gaining new insight into gravitational theories. Extending our earlier work, in this paper we introduce new double-copy constructions for large…
The cosmological compactification of D=10, N=1 supergravity-super-Yang-Mills theory obtained from superstring theory is studied. The constraint of unbroken N=1 supersymmetry is imposed. A duality transformation is performed on the resulting…
We show that the Hamiltonian of (N=1;d=10) super Yang-Mills can be expressed as a quadratic form in a very similar manner to that of the (N=4;d=4) theory. We find a similar quadratic form structure for pure Yang-Mills theory but this…
We consider bosonic supersymmetric backgrounds of ten-dimensional conformal supergravity. Up to local conformal isometry, we classify the maximally supersymmetric backgrounds, determine their conformal symmetry superalgebras and show how…