Supergravity in loop quantum gravity

Tuesday, March 9th

Konstantin Eder, FAU Erlangen

Supergravity in LQG
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By Jorge Pullin, LSU

Supersymmetry is a conjectured symmetry of nature in which to each particle corresponds a "superpartner" particle. The partners of bosons are fermions and vice-versa. So for instance, the electron (a fermion) has a boson superpartner known as the "selectron" and so on. No superpartner has ever been observed in reality so it is conjectured that this symmetry is broken in nature and can only be present at very high energies. Unfortunately, experiments at large accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland, are putting tighter and tighter bounds on supersymmetry. Supersymmetry is usually incorporated into string theory, hence the name superstrings. 

If one incorporates this symmetry into gravity, one obtains supergravity. This theory potentially has interesting properties. It could avoid the infinities one faces in usual perturbative quantum gravity, although this is not entirely clear yet.

This talk was about applying loop quantum gravity techniques to supergravity. It updated the treatment with modern techniques (older results referred to techniques that are not used anymore, in particular the use of complex variables) and further insights on how supersymmetry can manifest itself in the form of a gauge symmetry, the kind of symmetry that is the basis for the description of the other forces in nature. Among other aspects it explored the behavior of the theory in cosmology and how one could use supersymmetric matter as a "clock" to study the evolution in time. It also considered calculations of black hole entropy and how it could lead to connections with similar calculations in string theory.