Extension of the Poincar\'e group with half-integer spin generators: hypergravity and beyond

An extension of the Poincar\'e group with half-integer spin generators is explicitly constructed. We start discussing the case of three spacetime dimensions, and as an application, it is shown that hypergravity can be formulated so as to incorporate this structure as its local gauge symmetry. Since the algebra admits a nontrivial Casimir operator, the theory can be described in terms of gauge fields associated to the extension of the Poincar\'e group with a Chern-Simons action. The algebra is also shown to admit an infinite-dimensional non-linear extension, that in the case of fermionic spin-$3/2$ generators, corresponds to a subset of a contraction of two copies of WB$_2$. Finally, we show how the Poincar\'e group can be extended with half-integer spin generators for $d\geq3$ dimensions.Comment: 12 pages, no figures. Matches published versio

Asymptotic structure of N=2\mathcal{N}=2 supergravity in 3D: extended super-BMS3_3 and nonlinear energy bounds

The asymptotically flat structure of $\mathcal{N}=(2,0)$ supergravity in three spacetime dimensions is explored. The asymptotic symmetries are spanned by an extension of the super-BMS$_3$ algebra, with two independent $\hat{u}(1)$ currents of electric and magnetic type. These currents are associated to $U(1)$ fields being even and odd under parity, respectively. Remarkably, although the $U(1)$ fields do not generate a backreaction on the metric, they provide nontrivial Sugawara-like contributions to the BMS$_3$ generators, and hence to the energy and the angular momentum. The entropy of flat cosmological spacetimes with $U(1)$ fields then acquires a nontrivial dependence on the $\hat{u}(1)$ charges. If the spin structure is odd, the ground state corresponds to Minkowski spacetime, and although the anticommutator of the canonical supercharges is linear in the energy and in the electric-like $\hat{u}(1)$ charge, the energy becomes bounded from below by the energy of the ground state shifted by the square of the electric-like $\hat{u}(1)$ charge. If the spin structure is even, the same bound for the energy generically holds, unless the absolute value of the electric-like charge is less than minus the mass of Minkowski spacetime in vacuum, so that the energy has to be nonnegative. The explicit form of the Killing spinors is found for a wide class of configurations that fulfills our boundary conditions, and they exist precisely when the corresponding bounds are saturated. It is also shown that the spectra with periodic or antiperiodic boundary conditions for the fermionic fields are related by spectral flow, in a similar way as it occurs for the $\mathcal{N}=2$ super-Virasoro algebra. Indeed, our super-BMS$_3$ algebra can be recovered from the flat limit of the superconformal algebra with $\mathcal{N}=(2,2)$, truncating the fermionic generators of the right copy.Comment: 32 pages, no figures. Talk given at the ESI Programme and Workshop "Quantum Physics and Gravity" hosted by ESI, Vienna, June 2017. V3: minor changes and typos corrected. Matches published versio

Closed-shell interaction in silver and gold chlorides

Hartree-Fock and coupled-cluster calculations have been performed for cubic AgCl and for AuCl having a cubic or the observed structure with space group I4_1/amd. Cohesive energies and lattice constants are in excellent agreement with experiment for AgCl; for AuCl we find good agreement, and the experimental structure is correctly predicted to be lower in energy than the cubic one. Electron-correlation effects on lattice constants are very large, of up to 0.8 \AA for cubic AuCl. We especially discuss the strength of the closed-shell interactions, and for the first time a quantitative analysis of the so-called "aurophilic" Au(I)-Au(I) interaction is presented in solids.Comment: accepted by J. Chem. Phy

Asymptotic O(r)\mathcal O(r) gauge symmetries and gauge-invariant Poincar\'e generators in higher spacetime dimensions

The asymptotic symmetries of electromagnetism in all higher spacetime dimensions $d>4$ are extended, by incorporating consistently angle-dependent $u(1)$ gauge transformations with a linear growth in the radial coordinate at spatial infinity. Finiteness of the symplectic structure and preservation of the asymptotic conditions require to impose a set of strict parity conditions, under the antipodal map of the $(d-2)$-sphere, on the leading order fields at infinity. Canonical generators of the asymptotic symmetries are obtained through standard Hamiltonian methods. Remarkably, the theory endowed with this set of asymptotic conditions turns out to be invariant under a six-fold set of angle-dependent $u(1)$ transformations, whose generators form a centrally extended abelian algebra. The new charges generated by the $\mathcal O(r)$ gauge parameter are found to be conjugate to those associated to the now improper subleading $O(r^{-d+3})$ transformations, while the standard $\mathcal O(1)$ gauge transformations are canonically conjugate to the subleading $\mathcal{O}(r^{-d+4})$ transformations. This algebraic structure, characterized by the presence of central charges, allows us to perform a nonlinear redefinition of the Poincar\'e generators, that results in the decoupling of all of the $u(1)$ charges from the Poincar\'e algebra. Thus, the mechanism previously used in $d=4$ to find gauge-invariant Poincar\'e generators is shown to be a robust property of electromagnetism in all spacetime dimensions $d\geq 4$.Comment: 25 pages, no figures. References added. Matches with published versio