arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to José Figueroa-O'Farrill.
We classify the Lie superalgebra deformations of the Killing superalgebras of some M-theory backgrounds. We show that the Killing superalgebras of the Minkowski, Freund--Rubin and M5-brane backgrounds are rigid, whereas the ones for the M-wave, the Kaluza--Klein monopole and the M2-brane admit deformations, which we give explicitly.
We prove the existence of 3/4-BPS preons in four- and five-dimensional gauged supergravities by explicitly constructing them as smooth quotients of the AdS_4 and AdS_5 maximally supersymmetric backgrounds, respectively. This result illustrates how the spacetime topology resurrects a fraction of supersymmetry previously ruled out by the local analysis of the Killing spinor equations.
We present a geometric construction of the exceptional Lie algebras F4 and E8 starting from the round 8- and 15-spheres, respectively, inspired by the construction of the Killing superalgebra of a supersymmetric supergravity background. (There is no supergravity in the paper.)
M-theory preons -- solutions of eleven-dimensional supergravity preserving 31 supersymmetries -- have recently been shown to be locally maximally supersymmetric. This implies that if preons exist they are quotients of maximally supersymmetric solutions. In this paper we show that no such quotients exist. This is achieved by reducing the problem to quotients by cyclic groups in the image of the exponential map, for which there already exists a partial classification, which is completed in the present paper.
I will discuss the emergence of lorentzian symmetric spaces as supersymmetric supergravity backgrounds. I will focus on supergravity theories in dimension 11, 10, and 6, and will concentrate on the determination of the so-called maximally supersymmetric backgrounds, for which a classification exists up to local isometry. A special class of lorentzian symmetric spaces also plays a role in the determination of parallelisable supergravity backgrounds in type II supergravity, which I will also summarise. (To appear in the proceedings of the programme "Geometry of pseudo-riemannian manifolds with application to physics", hosted by the Erwin Schroedinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics.)
We investigate the gauging of the Wess-Zumino term of a sigma model with boundary. We derive a set of obstructions to gauging and we interpret them as the conditions for the Wess-Zumino term to extend to a closed form in a suitable equivariant relative de Rham complex. We illustrate this with the two-dimensional sigma model and we show that the new obstructions due to the boundary can be interpreted in terms of Courant algebroids. We specialise to the case of the Wess-Zumino-Witten model, where it is proved that there always exist suitable boundary conditions which allow gauging any subgroup which can be gauged in the absence of a boundary. We illustrate this with two natural classes of gaugings: (twisted) diagonal subgroups with boundary conditions given by (twisted) conjugacy classes, and chiral isotropic subgroups with boundary conditions given by cosets.
We construct examples of isometric M-theory backgrounds which preserve a different amount of supersymmetry depending on the choice of spin structure. These examples are of the form AdS_4 x L, where L is a seven-dimensional lens space whose fundamental group is cyclic of order 4k.
We explore the plane-wave limit of homogeneous spacetimes. For plane-wave limits along homogeneous geodesics the limit is known to be homogeneous and we exhibit the limiting metric in terms of Lie algebraic data. This simplifies many calculations and we illustrate this with several examples. We also investigate the behaviour of (reductive) homogeneous structures under the plane-wave limit.
This paper contains a classification of smooth Kaluza--Klein reductions (by one-parameter subgroups) of the maximally supersymmetric anti de Sitter backgrounds of supergravity theories. We present a classification of one-parameter subgroups of isometries of anti de Sitter spaces, discuss the causal properties of their orbits on these manifolds, and discuss their action on the space of Killing spinors. We analyse the problem of which quotients admit a spin structure. We then apply these results to write down the list of smooth everywhere spacelike supersymmetric quotients of AdS_3 x S^3 (x R^4), AdS_4 x S^7, AdS_5 x S^5 and AdS_7 x S^4, and the fraction of supersymmetry preserved by each quotient. The results are summarised in tables which should be useful on their own. The paper also includes a discussion of supersymmetry of singular quotients.
We classify and construct all the smooth Kaluza-Klein reductions to ten dimensions of the M2- and M5-brane configurations which preserve some of the supersymmetry. In this way we obtain a wealth of new supersymmetric IIA backgrounds describing composite configurations of D-branes, NS-branes and flux/nullbranes; bound states of D2-branes and strings, D4-branes and NS5-branes, as well as some novel configurations in which the quotient involves nowhere-vanishing transverse rotations to the brane twisted by a timelike or lightlike translation. From these results there also follow novel M-theory backgrounds locally isometric to the M-branes, some of which are time-dependent and all of which are asymptotic to discrete quotients of eleven-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. We emphasise the universality of the formalism by briefly discussing analogous analyses in type IIA/IIB dual to the ones mentioned above. Some comments on the dual gauge theory description of some of our configurations are also included.
We investigate the Kaluza-Klein reductions to ten dimensions of the purely gravitational half-BPS M-theory backgrounds: the M-wave and the Kaluza-Klein monopole. We determine the moduli space of smooth (supersymmetric) Kaluza-Klein reductions by classifying the freely-acting spacelike Killing vectors which preserve some Killing spinor. As a consequence we find a wealth of new supersymmetric IIA configurations involving composite and/or bound-state configurations of waves, D0 and D6-branes, Kaluza-Klein monopoles in type IIA and flux/nullbranes, and some other new configurations. Some new features raised by the geometry of the Taub-NUT space are discussed, namely the existence of reductions with no continuous moduli. We also propose an interpretation of the flux 5-brane in terms of the local description (close to the branes) of a bound state of D6-branes and ten-dimensional Kaluza-Klein monopoles.
We classify the simply-connected supersymmetric parallelisable backgrounds of heterotic supergravity. They are all given by parallelised Lie groups admitting a bi-invariant lorentzian metric. We find examples preserving 4, 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16 of the 16 supersymmetries.
We classify maximally supersymmetric backgrounds (vacua) of chiral (1,0) and (2,0) supergravities in six dimensions and, by reduction, also those of the minimal N=2 supergravity in five dimensions. Up to R-symmetry, the (2,0) vacua are in one-to-one correspondence with (1,0) vacua, and these in turn are locally isometric to Lie groups admitting a bi-invariant lorentzian metric with anti-selfdual parallelising torsion, which we classify. We then show that the five-dimensional vacua are homogeneous spaces arising canonically as the spaces of right cosets of spacelike one-parameter subgroups.
We classify non-dilatonic NS-NS type II supergravity backgrounds admitting a consistent absolute parallelism. They are all given by parallelised Lie groups admitting scalar flat bi-invariant lorentzian metrics. There are seven different classes, some of them containing moduli. For each class we determine the amount of supersymmetry which is preserved: there are examples with 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 28 and 32 supersymmetries.
We explore a Pluecker-type relation which occurs naturally in the study of maximally supersymmetric solutions of certain supergravity theories. This relation generalises at the same time the classical Pluecker relation and the Jacobi identity for a metric Lie algebra and coincides with the Jacobi identity of a metric n-Lie algebra. In low dimension we present evidence for a geometric characterisation of the relation in terms of middle-dimensional orthogonal planes in euclidean or lorentzian inner product spaces.
Departing from the observation that the Penrose limit of AdS_3 x S^3 is a group contraction in the sense of Inonu and Wigner, we explore the relation between the symmetric D-branes of AdS_3 x S^3 and those of its Penrose limit, a six-dimensional symmetric plane wave analogous to the four-dimensional Nappi--Witten spacetime. Both backgrounds are Lie groups admitting bi-invariant lorentzian metrics and symmetric D-branes wrap their (twisted) conjugacy classes. We determine the (twisted and untwisted) symmetric D-branes in the plane wave background and we prove the existence of a space-filling D5-brane and, separately, of a foliation by D3-branes with the geometry of the Nappi--Witten spacetime which can be understood as the Penrose limit of the AdS_2 x S^2 D3-brane in AdS_3 x S^3. Parenthetically we also derive a simple criterion for a symmetric plane wave to be isometric to a lorentzian Lie group. In particular we observe that the maximally supersymmetric plane wave in IIB string theory is isometric to a lorentzian Lie group, whereas the one in M-theory is not.
We classify (up to local isometry) the maximally supersymmetric solutions of the eleven- and ten-dimensional supergravity theories. We find that the AdS solutions, the Hpp-waves and the flat space solutions exhaust them.
We investigate the Penrose limits of classical string and M-theory backgrounds. We prove that the number of (super)symmetries of a supergravity background never decreases in the limit. We classify all the possible Penrose limits of AdS x S spacetimes and of supergravity brane solutions. We also present the Penrose limits of various other solutions: intersecting branes, supersymmetric black holes and strings in diverse dimensions, and cosmological models. We explore the Penrose limit of an isometrically embedded spacetime and find a generalisation to spaces with more than one time. Finally, we show that the Penrose limit is a large tension limit for all branes including those with fields of Born--Infeld type.