20.05.2019 (Monday)

All N=4 conformal supergravities

Regular Seminar Franz Ciceri (AEI Potsdam)

at:
15:00 QMW
room G O Jones 610
abstract:

Supersymmetric extensions of conformal gravity have been known for a long time. In four dimensions, N=4 conformal supergravity is the maximally supersymmetric theory of this type. Although its field representation and the non-linear transformations rules were derived more than 30 years ago, no invariant action had been constructed so far. We present the most general class of actions which turns out to be characterised by a holomorphic function. This deviates from the non-maximally supersymmetric cases where the action is unique. Meanwhile, elaborate loop computations have indicated that N=4 Poincare supergravity diverges at four loops, and the divergence is believed to be related to the presence of a potential one-loop anomaly in the duality symmetry of the theory. We argue that one of the constructed conformal actions, after gauge fixing the conformal symmetries and carefully eliminating auxiliary fields, can be used as a finite supersymmetric counterterm that cancels the anomalous contribution of the one-loop graphs in the Poincare theory.