Realizations of exceptional U-duality groups as conformal and quasiconformal groups and their minimal unitary representations

We review the novel quasiconformal realizations of exceptional U-duality groups whose "quantization" lead directly to their minimal unitary irreducible representations. The group $E_{8(8)}$ can be realized as a quasiconformal group in the 57 dimensional charge-entropy space of BPS black hole solutions of maximal N=8 supergravity in four dimensions and leaves invariant "lightlike separations" with respect to a quartic norm. Similarly $E_{7(7)}$ acts as a conformal group in the 27 dimensional charge space of BPS black hole solutions in five dimensional N=8 supergravity and leaves invariant "lightlike separations" with respect to a cubic norm. For the exceptional N=2 Maxwell-Einstein supergravity theory the corresponding quasiconformal and conformal groups are $E_{8(-24)}$ and $E_{7(-25)}$, respectively. These conformal and quasiconformal groups act as spectrum generating symmetry groups in five and four dimensions and are isomorphic to the U-duality groups of the corresponding supergravity theories in four and three dimensions, respectively. Hence the spectra of these theories are expected to form unitary representations of these groups whose minimal unitary realizations are also reviewed.Comment: Invited talk at the first Gunnar Nordstroem Symposium on Theoretical Physics (Helsinki, Aug. 2003

Novel supermultiplets of SU(2,2|4) and the AdS_5/CFT_4 duality

We continue our study of the unitary supermultiplets of the N=8, d=5 anti-de Sitter (AdS_5) superalgebra SU(2,2|4), which is also the N=4 extended conformal superalgebra in d=4. We show explicitly how to go from the compact SU(2)XSU(2)XU(1) basis to the non-compact SL(2,C)XD basis of the positive energy unitary representations of the conformal group SU(2,2) in d=4. The doubleton representations of the AdS_5 group SU(2,2), which do not have a smooth Poincare limit in d=5, are shown to represent fields with vanishing masses in four dimensional Minkowski space. The unique CPT self-conjugate irreducible doubleton supermultiplet of SU(2,2|4)is simply the N=4 Yang-Mills supermultiplet in d=4. We study some novel short non-doubleton supermultiplets of SU(2,2|4) that have spin range 2 and that do not appear in the Kaluza-Klein spectrum of type IIB supergravity or in tensor products of the N=4 Yang-Mills supermultiplet with itself. These novel supermultiplets can be obtained from tensoring chiral doubleton supermultiplets, some of which we expect to be related to the massless limits of 1/4 BPS states. Hence, these novel supermultiplets may be relevant to the solitonic sector of IIB superstring and/or (p,q) superstrings over AdS_5 X S^5.Comment: Minor modifications to clarify the role of central charge and the outer automorphism group U(1)_Y in the representation theory of SU(2,2|4); typos corrected; 28 pages; Late

The Minimal Unitary Representation of E_8(8)

We give a new construction of the minimal unitary representation of the exceptional group E_8(8) on a Hilbert space of complex functions in 29 variables. Due to their manifest covariance with respect to the E_7(7) subgroup of E_8(8) our formulas are simpler than previous realizations, and thus well suited for applications in superstring and M theory.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure, version to be published in ATM

Domain Wall World(s)

Gravitational properties of domain walls in fundamental theory and their implications for the trapping of gravity are reviewed. In particular, the difficulties to embed gravity trapping configurations within gauged supergravity is reviewed and the status of the domain walls obtained via the breathing mode of sphere reduced Type IIB supergravity is presented.Comment: 11 pages, Based on talk given at Strings 2000 Minor corrections, references adde

BPS black holes, quantum attractor flows and automorphic forms

We propose a program for counting microstates of four-dimensional BPS black holes in N >= 2 supergravities with symmetric-space valued scalars by exploiting the symmetries of timelike reduction to three dimensions. Inspired by the equivalence between the four dimensional attractor flow and geodesic flow on the three-dimensional scalar manifold, we radially quantize stationary, spherically symmetric BPS geometries. Connections between the topological string amplitude, attractor wave function, the Ooguri-Strominger-Vafa conjecture and the theory of automorphic forms suggest that black hole degeneracies are counted by Fourier coefficients of modular forms for the three-dimensional U-duality group, associated to special "unipotent" representations which appear in the supersymmetric Hilbert space of the quantum attractor flow.Comment: 9 pages, revtex; v2: references added and typos correcte

One-loop four-point amplitudes in pure and matter-coupled N <= 4 supergravity

We construct all supergravity theories that can be obtained through factorized orbifold projections of N=8 supergravity, exposing their double-copy structure, and calculate their one-loop four-point scattering amplitudes. We observe a unified structure in both matter and gravity amplitudes, and demonstrate that the four-graviton amplitudes are insensitive to the precise nature of the matter couplings. We show that these amplitudes are identical for the two different realizations of N=4 supergravity with two vector multiplets, and argue that this feature extends to all multiplicities and loop orders as well as to higher dimensions. We also construct a selected set of supergravities obtained through a non-factorized orbifold action. Furthermore we calculate one-loop four-point amplitudes for all pure super-Yang-Mills theories with less-than-maximal supersymmetry using the duality between color and kinematics, finding here a unified expression that holds for all four gluon amplitudes in the theories. We recover the related amplitudes of factorized N<=4 supergravities employing the double-copy construction. We observe a requirement that the four-point loop-level amplitudes have non-local integrand representations, exhibiting a mild non-locality in the form of inverse powers of the three external Mandelstam invariants. These are the first loop-level color-kinematic-satisfying representations in reduced supersymmetry theories.Comment: 41 pages, 3 figures, PDFLaTeX, section 3.2 expanded, version accepted for publication in JHE

The Vacua of 5d, N=2 Gauged Yang-Mills/Einstein/Tensor Supergravity: Abelian Case

We give a detailed study of the critical points of the potentials of thesimplest non-trivial N=2 gauged Yang-Mills/Einstein supergravity theories withtensor multiplets. The scalar field target space of these examples isSO(1,1)XSO(2,1)/SO(2). The possible gauge groups are SO(2)XU(1)_R andSO(1,1)XU(1)_R, where U(1)_R is a subgroup of the R-symmetry group SU(2)_R, andSO(2) and SO(1,1) are subgroups of the isometry group of the scalar manifold.The scalar potentials of these theories consist of a contribution from theU(1)_R gauging and a contribution that is due to the presence of the tensorfields. We find that the latter contribution can change the form of thesupersymmetric extrema from maxima to saddle points. In addition, it leads tonovel critical points not present in the corresponding gaugedYang-Mills/Einstein supergravity theories without the tensor multiplets. Forthe SO(2)XU(1)_R gauged theory these novel critical points correspond toanti-de Sitter ground states. For the non-compact SO(1,1)XU(1)_R gauging, thenovel ground states are de Sitter. The analysis of the critical points of thepotential carries over in a straightforward manner to the generic family of N=2gauged Yang-Mills/Einstein supergravity theories coupled to tensor multipletswhose scalar manifolds are of the form SO(1,1)XSO(n-1,1)/SO(n-1).We give a detailed study of the critical points of the potentials of the simplest non-trivial N=2 gauged Yang-Mills/Einstein supergravity theories with tensor multiplets. The scalar field target space of these examples is SO(1,1)XSO(2,1)/SO(2). The possible gauge groups are SO(2)XU(1)_R and SO(1,1)XU(1)_R, where U(1)_R is a subgroup of the R-symmetry group SU(2)_R, and SO(2) and SO(1,1) are subgroups of the isometry group of the scalar manifold. The scalar potentials of these theories consist of a contribution from the U(1)_R gauging and a contribution that is due to the presence of the tensor fields. We find that the latter contribution can change the form of the supersymmetric extrema from maxima to saddle points. In addition, it leads to novel critical points not present in the corresponding gauged Yang-Mills/Einstein supergravity theories without the tensor multiplets. For the SO(2)XU(1)_R gauged theory these novel critical points correspond to anti-de Sitter ground states. For the non-compact SO(1,1)XU(1)_R gauging, the novel ground states are de Sitter. The analysis of the critical points of the potential carries over in a straightforward manner to the generic family of N=2 gauged Yang-Mills/Einstein supergravity theories coupled to tensor multiplets whose scalar manifolds are of the form SO(1,1)XSO(n-1,1)/SO(n-1)

Explicit Orbit Classification of Reducible Jordan Algebras and Freudenthal Triple Systems

We determine explicit orbit representatives of reducible Jordan algebras and of their corresponding Freudenthal triple systems. This work has direct application to the classification of extremal black hole solutions of N = 2, 4 locally supersymmetric theories of gravity coupled to an arbitrary number of Abelian vector multiplets in D = 4, 5 space-time dimensions.Comment: 18 pages. Updated to match published versio

Minimal unitary representation of SU(2,2) and its deformations as massless conformal fields and their supersymmetric extensions

We study the minimal unitary representation (minrep) of SO(4,2) over an Hilbert space of functions of three variables, obtained by quantizing its quasiconformal action on a five dimensional space. The minrep of SO(4,2), which coincides with the minrep of SU(2,2) similarly constructed, corresponds to a massless conformal scalar in four spacetime dimensions. There exists a one-parameter family of deformations of the minrep of SU(2,2). For positive (negative) integer values of the deformation parameter \zeta one obtains positive energy unitary irreducible representations corresponding to massless conformal fields transforming in (0,\zeta/2) ((-\zeta/2,0)) representation of the SL(2,C) subgroup. We construct the supersymmetric extensions of the minrep of SU(2,2) and its deformations to those of SU(2,2|N). The minimal unitary supermultiplet of SU(2,2|4), in the undeformed case, simply corresponds to the massless N=4 Yang-Mills supermultiplet in four dimensions. For each given non-zero integer value of \zeta, one obtains a unique supermultiplet of massless conformal fields of higher spin. For SU(2,2|4) these supermultiplets are simply the doubleton supermultiplets studied in arXiv:hep-th/9806042.Comment: Revised with an extended introduction and additional references. Typos corrected. 49 pages; Latex fil