TERNARY ALGEBRAIC CONSTRUCTION OF EXTENDED SUPERCONFORMAL ALGEBRAS

Abstract

We give a construction of extended (N = 2 and N = 4) superconformal algebras over a very general class of ternary algebras (triple systems). For N = 2 this construction leads to superconformal algebras corresponding to certain coset spaces of Lie groups with non-vanishing torsion and generalizes a previous construction over Jordan triple systems which are associated with Hermitian symmetric spaces. In general, a given Lie group admits more than one coset space of this type. We give examples for all simple Lie groups. In particular, the division algebras and their tensor products lead to N = 2 superconformal algebras associated with the groups of the Magic Square. For a very special class of ternary algebras, namely the Freudenthal triple (FT) systems, the N = 2 superconformal algebras can be extended to N = 4 superconformal algebras with the gauge group SU (2) × SU (2) × U (1). We give a complete list of the FT systems and the corresponding N = 4 models. They are associated with the unique quaternionic symmetric spaces of Lie groups.