Superconformal symmetry in 11D superspace and the M-theory effective action

Abstract

We establish a theorem about non-trivial 11D supergravity fluctuations that are conformally related to flat superspace geometry. Under the assumption that a theory of conformal 11D supergravity exists, similar in form to that of previously constructed theories in lower dimensions, this theorem demands the appearance of non-vanishing dimension 1/2 torsion tensors in order to accommodate a non-trivial 11D conformal compensator and thus M-theory corrections that break superconformal symmetry. At the complete non-linear level, a presentation of a conventional minimal superspace realization of Weyl symmetry in eleven-dimensional superspace is also described. All of our results taken together imply that there exists some realization of conformal symmetry relevant for the M-theory effective action. We thus led to conjecture this is also true for the full and complete M-theory.