On the Super Higgs Effect in Extended Supergravity

We consider the reduction of supersymmetry in N-extended four dimensional supergravity via the super Higgs mechanism in theories without cosmological constant. We provide an analysis largely based on the properties of long and short multiplets of Poincare' supersymmetry. Examples of the super Higgs phenomenon are realized in spontaneously broken N=8 supergravity through the Scherk-Schwarz mechanism and in superstring compactification in presence of brane fluxes. In many models the massive vectors count the difference in number of the translation isometries of the scalar sigma-model geometries in the broken and unbroken phase.Comment: Version to appear on Nuclear Physics

Axion gauge symmetries and generalized Chern-Simons terms in N=1 supersymmetric theories

We compute the form of the Lagrangian of N=1 supersymmetric theories with gauged axion symmetries. It turns out that there appear generalized Chern-Simons terms that were not considered in previous superspace formulations of general N=1 theories. Such gaugings appear in supergravities arising from flux compactifications of superstrings, as well as from Scherk-Schwarz generalized dimensional reduction in M-theory. We also present the dual superspace formulation where axion chiral multiplets are dualized into linear multiplets.Comment: References added and few misprints correcte

New Gauged N=8, D=4 Supergravities

New gaugings of four dimensional N=8 supergravity are constructed, including one which has a Minkowski space vacuum that preserves N=2 supersymmetry and in which the gauge group is broken to $SU(3)xU(1)^2$. Previous gaugings used the form of the ungauged action which is invariant under a rigid $SL(8,R)$ symmetry and promoted a 28-dimensional subgroup ($SO(8),SO(p,8-p)$ or the non-semi-simple contraction $CSO(p,q,8-p-q)$) to a local gauge group. Here, a dual form of the ungauged action is used which is invariant under $SU^*(8)$ instead of $SL(8,R)$ and new theories are obtained by gauging 28-dimensional subgroups of $SU^*(8)$. The gauge groups are non-semi-simple and are different real forms of the $CSO(2p,8-2p)$ groups, denoted $CSO^*(2p,8-2p)$, and the new theories have a rigid SU(2) symmetry. The five dimensional gauged N=8 supergravities are dimensionally reduced to D=4. The $D=5,SO(p,6-p)$ gauge theories reduce, after a duality transformation, to the $D=4,CSO(p,6-p,2)$ gauging while the $SO^*(6)$ gauge theory reduces to the $D=4, CSO^*(6,2)$ gauge theory. The new theories are related to the old ones via an analytic continuation. The non-semi-simple gaugings can be dualised to forms with different gauge groups.Comment: 33 pages. Reference adde