Maximal supersymmetry and exceptional groups

The article is a tribute to my old mentor, collaborator and friend Murray Gell-Mann. In it I describe work by Pierre Ramond, Sung-Soo Kim and myself where we describe the N = 8 Supergravity in the light-cone formalism. We show how the Cremmer-Julia E7(7) non-linear symmetry is implemented and how the full supermultiplet is a representation of the E7(7) symmetry. I also show how the E7(7) symmetry is a key to understand the higher order couplings in the theory and is very useful when we discuss possible counterterms for this theory.Comment: Proceedings of Conference in Honour of Murray Gell-Mann's 80th Birthda

Orbital-Peierls State in NaTiSi2O6

Does the quasi one-dimensional titanium pyroxene NaTiSi2O6 exhibit the novel {\it orbital-Peierls} state? We calculate its groundstate properties by three methods: Monte Carlo simulations, a spin-orbital decoupling scheme and a mapping onto a classical model. The results show univocally that for the spin and orbital ordering to occur at the same temperature --an experimental observation-- the crystal field needs to be small and the orbitals are active. We also find that quantum fluctuations in the spin-orbital sector drive the transition, explaining why canonical bandstructure methods fail to find it. The conclusion that NaTiSi2O6 shows an orbital-Peierls transition is therefore inevitable.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Oxidizing SuperYang-Mills from (N=4,d=4) to (N=1,d=10)

We introduce superspace generalizations of the transverse derivatives to rewrite the four-dimensional N=4 Yang-Mills theory into the fully ten-dimensional N=1 Yang-Mills in light-cone form. The explicit SuperPoincare algebra is constructed and invariance of the ten-dimensional action is proved.Comment: 15 page

Absence of magnetic monopoles in Maxwellian magnetoelectrics

The electromagnetic response of topological insulators is governed by axion electrodynamics, which features a topological magnetoelectric term in the Maxwell equations. As a consequence magnetic fields become the source of electric fields and vice-versa, a phenomenon that is general for any material exhibiting a linear magnetoelectric effect. Axion electrodynamics has been associated with the possibility to create magnetic monopoles, in particular by a electrical charge that is screened above the surface of a magnetoelectric material. Here we present the exact solution for the electromagnetic fields in this geometry and show that while vortex-like magnetic screening fields are generated by the electrical charge their divergence is identically zero at every point in space which implies a strict absence of magnetic monopoles. Although magnetic image charges can be made explicit in the problem, no bound state with electric charges yielding a dyon arises. A dyon-like angular momentum follows from our analysis, but is quantized in a universal way, because of its dependence on the dielectric constant. This is consistent with a general argument that precludes magnetic monopoles to be generated in Maxwell magnetoelectrics.Comment: v2: 9 pages, 3 figures; improved presentation and more detailed appendices; added calculation of angular momentum; appendix is made more pedagogical and now includes the detailed solution for a point charge in the presence of a topological dielectric sphere; several references are adde

The BLG Theory in Light-Cone Superspace

The light-cone superspace version of the d=3, N=8 superconformal theory of Bagger, Lambert and Gustavsson (BLG) is obtained as a solution to constraints imposed by OSp(2,2|8) superalgebra. The Hamiltonian of the theory is shown to be a quadratic form of the dynamical supersymmetry transformation.Comment: 45 pages, v2: reference added, minor typos corrected, published versio