Four-dimensional geometric supergravity and electromagnetic duality: a brief guide for mathematicians

Abstract

We give a gentle introduction to the global geometric formulation of the bosonic sector of four-dimensional supergravity on an oriented four-manifold $M$ of arbitrary topology, providing a geometric characterization of its U-duality group. The geometric formulation of four-dimensional supergravity is based on a choice of a vertically Riemannian submersion $π$ over $M$ equipped with a flat Ehresmann connection, which determines the non-linear section sigma model of the theory, and a choice of flat symplectic vector bundle $\mathcal{S}$ equipped with a positive complex polarization over the total space of $π$, which encodes the inverse gauge couplings and theta angles of the theory and determines its gauge sector. The classical fields of the theory consist of Lorentzian metrics on $M$, global sections of $π$ and two-forms valued in $\mathcal{S}$ that satisfy an algebraic relation which defines the notion of \emph{twisted} self-duality in four Lorentzian dimensions. We use this geometric formulation to investigate the group of electromagnetic duality transformations of supergravity, also known as the continuous classical U-duality group, which we characterize using a certain short exact sequence of automorphism groups of vector bundles. Moreover, we discuss the general structure of the Killing spinor equations of four-dimensional supergravity, providing several explicit examples and remarking on a few open mathematical problems. This presentation is aimed at mathematicians working in differential geometry.