New gauged N = 8, D = 4 supergravities

Abstract

New gaugings of four-dimensional N = 8 supergravity are constructed, including one which has a Minkowski space vacuum that preserves N = 2 supersymmetry and in which the gauge group is broken to SU(3) × U(1)2. Previous gaugings used the form of the ungauged action which is invariant under a rigid symmetry and promoted a 28-dimensional subgroup (SO(8), SO(p, 8 − p) or the non-semi-simple contraction CSO(p, q, 8 − p − q)) to a local gauge group. Here, a dual form of the ungauged action is used which is invariant under SU*(8) instead of and new theories are obtained by gauging 28-dimensional subgroups of SU*(8). The gauge groups are non-semi-simple and are different real forms of the CSO(2p, 8 − 2p) groups, denoted as CSO*(2p, 8 − 2p), and the new theories have a rigid SU(2) symmetry. The five-dimensional gauged N = 8 supergravities are dimensionally reduced to D = 4. The D = 5, SO(p, 6 − p) gauge theories reduce, after a duality transformation, to the D = 4, CSO(p, 6 − p, 2) gauging while the SO*(6) gauge theory reduces to the D = 4, CSO*(6, 2) gauge theory. The new theories are related to the old ones via an analytic continuation. The non-semi-simple gaugings can be dualized to forms with different gauge groups.