A PBW commutator lemma for U_q[gl(m|n)]

We present and prove in detail a Poincare--Birkhoff--Witt commutator lemma for the quantum superalgebra U_q[gl(m|n)].Comment: 16 pages, no figure

On Lagrangians and Gaugings of Maximal Supergravities

A consistent gauging of maximal supergravity requires that the T-tensor transforms according to a specific representation of the duality group. The analysis of viable gaugings is thus amenable to group-theoretical analysis, which we explain and exploit for a large variety of gaugings. We discuss the subtleties in four spacetime dimensions, where the ungauged Lagrangians are not unique and encoded in an E_7(7)\Sp(56,R)/GL(28) matrix. Here we define the T-tensor and derive all relevant identities in full generality. We present a large number of examples in d=4,5 spacetime dimensions which include non-semisimple gaugings of the type arising in (multiple) Scherk-Schwarz reductions. We also present some general background material on the latter as well as some group-theoretical results which are necessary for using computer algebra.Comment: 39 pages, LaTeX2

The Vector-Tensor Supermultiplet with Gauged Central Charge

The vector-tensor multiplet is coupled off-shell to an N=2 vector multiplet such that its central charge transformations are realized locally. A gauged central charge is a necessary prerequisite for a coupling to supergravity and the strategy underlying our construction uses the potential for such a coupling as a guiding principle. The results for the action and transformation rules take a nonlinear form and necessarily include a Chern-Simons term. After a duality transformation the action is encoded in a homogeneous holomorphic function consistent with special geometry.Comment: 8 pages, LATE

Tensor supermultiplets and toric quaternion-Kahler geometry

We review the relation between 4n-dimensional quaternion-Kahler metrics with n+1 abelian isometries and superconformal theories of n+1 tensor supermultiplets. As an application we construct the class of eight-dimensional quaternion-Kahler metrics with three abelian isometries in terms of a single function obeying a set of linear second-order partial differential equations.Comment: 8 pages, Contribution to the proceedings of the RTN ForcesUniverse Network Workshop, Napoli, October 9th - 13th, 200

Lagrangians with electric and magnetic charges of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories

General Lagrangians are constructed for N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories in four space-time dimensions involving gauge groups with (non-abelian) electric and magnetic charges. The charges induce a scalar potential, which, when the charges are regarded as spurionic quantities, is invariant under electric/magnetic duality. The resulting theories are especially relevant for supergravity, but details of the extension to local supersymmetry will be discussed elsewhere. The results include the coupling to hypermultiplets. Without the latter, it is demonstrated how an off-shell representation can be constructed based on vector and tensor supermultiplets.Comment: 34 pages, LaTe

Special geometry in hypermultiplets

We give a detailed analysis of pairs of vector and hypermultiplet theories with N=2 supersymmetry in four spacetime dimensions that are related by the (classical) mirror map. The symplectic reparametrizations of the special K\"ahler space associated with the vector multiplets induce corresponding transformations on the hypermultiplets. We construct the Sp(1)$\times$Sp($n$) one-forms in terms of which the hypermultiplet couplings are encoded and exhibit their behaviour under symplectic reparametrizations. Both vector and hypermultiplet theories allow vectorial central charges in the supersymmetry algebra associated with integrals over the K\"ahler and hyper-K\"ahler forms, respectively. We show how these charges and the holomorphic BPS mass are related by the mirror map.Comment: Latex 36 pp. A few minor correction

Recalling All the Olympians: W. B. Yeats’s “Beautiful Lofty Things,” On the Boiler and the Agenda of National Rebirth

While it has been omitted by numerous critics in their otherwise comprehensive readings of Yeats’s oeuvre, “Beautiful Lofty Things” has been placed among the mythical poems, partly in accordance with Yeats’s own intention; in a letter to his wife, he suggested that “Lapis Lazuli, the poem called ‘To D. W.’ ‘Beautiful Lofty Things,’ ‘Imitated from the Japanese’ & ‘Gyres’ . . . would go well together in a bunch.” The poem has been inscribed in the Yeats canon as registering a series of fleeting epiphanies of the mythical in the mundane. However, “Beautiful Lofty Things,” evocative of a characteristically Yeatsian employment of myth though it certainly is, seems at the same time to fuse Yeats’s quite earthly preoccupations. It is here argued that the poem is organized around a tightly woven matrix of figures that comprise Yeats’s idea of the Irish nation as a “poetical culture.” Thus the position of the lyric in the poet’s oeuvre deserves to be shifted from periphery towards an inner part of his cultural and political ideas of the time. Indeed, the poem can be viewed as one of Yeats’s central late comments on the state of the nation and, significantly, one in which he is able to proffer a humanist strategy for developing a culturally modern state rather than miring his argument in occasionally over-reckless display of abhorrence of modernit

The Shortest Way to Modernity Is via the Margins: J.H. Prynne’s Later Poetry

In the essay an attempt is made to investigate the processes of construction and reconstruction of meaning in the later books of the Cambridge poet J.H. Prynne. It has been argued that his poetry disturbs the act of meaning-making in a ceaseless experimental reconnection of words taken from multifarious discourses, ranging from economics to theology. Yet, what appears striking in this poetry is the fact that these lyrics take their force from figurative meaning with which the words are endowed in the process of a poem’s unfolding. Prynne appears to compose his lyrics by juxtaposing words that in themselves (or sometimes in small clusters) do yield a meaning but together exude an aura of unintelligibility. We may see this process as aiming at the destruction of what might be posited as the centre of signification of the modern language by constantly dispersing the meaning to the fringes of understanding. The poems force the reader to look to the margins of their meaning in the sense that the signification of the entire lyric is an unstable composite of figurative meanings of this lyric’s individual words and phrases. To approach this poetry a need arises to read along the lines of what is here termed “fleeting assertion”; it is not that Prynne’s poems debar centre in favour of, for instance, Derridean freeplay but rather that they seek to ever attempt to erect a centre through the influx from the margins of signification. Therefore they call for strong interpretive assertions without which they veer close to an absurdity of incomprehension; however, those assertions must always be geared to accepting disparate significatory influxes. Indeed, interpretation becomes a desperate chase after “seeing anew” with language but, at the same time, a chase that must a priori come to terms with the fact that this new vision will forever remain in the making

Open and Closed Supermembranes with Winding

Motivated by manifest Lorentz symmetry and a well-defined large-N limit prescription, we study the supersymmetric quantum mechanics proposed as a model for the collective dynamics of D0-branes from the point of view of the 11-dimensional supermembrane. We argue that the continuity of the spectrum persists irrespective of the presence of winding around compact target-space directions and discuss the central charges in the superalgebra arising from winding membrane configurations. Along the way we comment on the structure of open supermembranes.Comment: Contribution to the proc. Strings '97, 10 pages, LaTeX, uses espcrc