Generalized Wigner-Inönü contractions and Maxwell (super)algebras

Abstract

We consider a class of generalized Wigner-Inönü contractions for the semidirect product of two particularly related semisimple Lie (super)algebras. A special class of such contractions provides the D = 4 Maxwell algebra and the recently introduced simple D = 4 Maxwell superalgebra. Further we present two types of D = 4 N-extended Maxwell superalgebras, the nonstandard one for any N with ½N(N−1) central charges and the standard one, for even N = 2k, with k(2k − 1) internal symmetry generators.