Novel supersymmetric extension of BMS symmetries at null infinity

Abstract

We show that we can combine the (complex, self-dual) Bondi-Metzner-Sachs (BMS) vector fields with the recently defined BMS twistors to obtain a new supersymmetric extension of the BMS symmetries at null infinity. We compare our construction to other supersymmetric extensions of the BMS algebra proposed in the context of supergravity. Unlike the standard constructions the anticommutator in our superalgebra generates all the BMS vector fields including the Lorentz transformations. We also show that there exists a projection from our BMS Lie superalgebra to the global subalgebra of the Neveu-Schwarz supersymmetries on a 2-sphere, which are commonly considered in string theory and 2-dimensional conformal field theory.