Supergravity from the Bottom Up

Abstract

We employ on-shell methods to construct scattering amplitudes and derive effective theories involving massive spin-3/2 fermions interacting with spin 0, 1 and 2 bosons. The four-point massive amplitudes are constructed using an all-line-transverse momentum shift, assuming that in the massless limit, three-point interactions are smooth and the Ward identity is satisfied. For a Majorana spin-3/2 fermion with mass $m_{3/2}$, we show that interactions with only spin 0 and massive spin-1 bosons do not lead to an effective theory valid up to a cutoff $\Lambda \gg m_{3/2}$ that is independent of particle masses. Instead, adding an interaction with a spin-2 graviton gives rise to four-point amplitudes with a Planck scale unitarity cutoff that reproduces well-known results from $N=1$ supergravity, such as $F$-term breaking with a complex scalar and $D$-term breaking with an additional massive photon. These bottom-up results are then extended to two Majorana spin-3/2 fermions where an interacting effective theory valid up to $\Lambda \gg m_{3/2}$ again requires the introduction of the spin-2 graviton. Unitarity up to the Planck scale is then achieved when the two Majorana spin-3/2 fermions have unequal masses, and necessarily couple to two massive spin-1 states corresponding to the spontaneous breaking of $N=2$ supergravity to $N=0$. Our results, obtained from the bottom-up and without any Lagrangian, imply that broken supergravity is the unique, effective theory involving interactions of massive spin-3/2 fermions valid up to a cutoff $\Lambda \gg m_{3/2}$ that does not depend on particle masses.