How Space‐Times Emerge from the Superpoint

Abstract

AbstractWe describe how the super Minkowski space‐times relevant to string theory and M‐theory, complete with their Lorentz metrics and spin structures, emerge from a much more elementary object: the superpoint. In the sense of higher structures, this comes from treating the superpoint as an object in a flavor of rational homotopy theory, and repeatedly constructing central extensions. We will fit this story into the larger picture of the brane bouquet of Fiorenza–Sati–Schreiber: string theories and membrane theories emerge from super Minkowski space‐times in precisely the same way as the super Minkowski space‐times themselves emerge from the superpoint. This note is adapted from a talk I gave at the Durham symposium Higher Structures in M‐Theory.