Local E11 and the gauging of the trombone symmetry

Abstract

In any dimension, the positive level generators of the very extended Kac–Moody algebra E11 with completely antisymmetric spacetime indices are associated with the form fields of the corresponding maximal supergravity. We consider the local E11 algebra, that is the algebra obtained by enlarging these generators of E11 in such a way that the global E11 symmetries are promoted to gauge symmetries. These are the gauge symmetries of the corresponding massless maximal supergravity. We show the existence of a new type of deformation of the local E11 algebra, which corresponds to the gauging of the symmetry under rescaling of the fields. In particular, we show how the gauged IIA theory of Howe, Lambert and West is obtained from an 11-dimensional group element that only depends on the 11th coordinate via a linear rescaling. We then show how this results in ten dimensions in a deformed local E11 algebra of a new type.