Reviving 3D $\mathcal{N}=8$ superconformal field theories

Abstract

We present a Lagrangian formulation for $\mathcal{N}=8$ superconformal field theories in three spacetime dimensions that is general enough to encompass infinite-dimensional gauge algebras that generally go beyond Lie algebras. To this end we employ Chern-Simons theories based on Leibniz algebras, which give rise to L${}_{\infty }$ algebras and are defined on the dual space ${\mathfrak{g}}^{\ast }$ of a Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ by means of an embedding tensor map $\vartheta :{\mathfrak{g}}^{\ast }\to \mathfrak{g}$. We show that for the Lie algebra ${\mathfrak{sdiff}}_3$ of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms on a 3-manifold there is a natural embedding tensor defining a Leibniz algebra on the space of one-forms. Specifically, we show that the cotangent bundle to any 3-manifold with a volume-form carries the structure of a (generalized) Courant algebroid. The resulting $\mathcal{N}=8$ superconformal field theories are shown to be equivalent to Bandos-Townsend theories. We show that the theory based on $S^3$ is an infinite-dimensional generalization of the Bagger-Lambert-Gustavsson model that in turn is a consistent truncation of the full theory. We also review a Scherk-Schwarz reduction on $S^2\times S^1$, which gives the super-Yang-Mills theory with gauge algebra ${\mathfrak{sdiff}}_2$, and we construct massive deformations.

32 pages, v2: minor changes, version to appear in JHEP

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Non-Riemannian geometry of M-theory
• Leibniz Gauge Theories and Infinity Structures