Lie Superalgebras Associated with Constant Sectional Curvature

Abstract

This note describes an observation connecting Riemannian manifolds of constant sectional curvature with a particular class of Lie superalgebras. Specifically, it is shown that the structural equations of a space M with constant sectional curvature, of one variety or another, nearly coincide with some identities satisfied by tensors which can be used to construct some specific families of Lie superalgebras. In particular, one obtains either osp(n,2), spl(n,2), or osp(4,2n) if the Riemannian manifold has constant curvature, constant holomorphic curvature or constant quaternion-holomorphic curvature, respectively.