SUSY vs E8 Gauge Theory in 11 Dimensions

Abstract

Diaconescu, Moore and Witten have shown that the topological part of the M-theory partition function is an invariant of an E8 gauge bundle over the 11-dimensional bulk. This presents a puzzle as an 11d gauge theory cannot exhibit linearly realized supersymmetry. One possibility is that the gauge theory is nonsupersymmetric and flows to 11d SUGRA only in the infrared, with SUSY arising as a low energy accidental degeneracy. Although no such gauge theory has been constructed, any such construction must satisfy a number of constraints in order to correctly reproduce the known 10-dimensional physics on each boundary component. We analyze these constraints and in particular use them to attempt an approximate construction of the 11d gravitino as a condensate of the gauge theory fields.

14 pages, no figures

References in corpus (4)

• The Loop Group of E_8 and K-Theory from 11d
• Anomaly free effective action for the elementary M5-brane
• A Toy Model of the M5-brane: Anomalies of Monopole Strings in Five Dimensions
• K-Theory and S-Duality: Starting Over from Square 3

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Some Relations between Twisted K-theory and E8 Gauge Theory
• On the underlying gauge group structure of D=11 supergravity
• Duality symmetry and the form fields of M-theory
• Flux Quantization and the M-Theoretic Characters
• M-theory and Characteristic Classes
• Twistorial Cohomotopy implies Green-Schwarz anomaly cancellation
• Super-exceptional geometry: origin of heterotic M-theory and super-exceptional embedding construction of M5
• The Elliptic curves in gauge theory, string theory, and cohomology
• Duality and cohomology in M-theory with boundary
• Flux Quantization
• The Loop Group of E8 and Targets for Spacetime
• Flux Quantization on 11-dimensional Superspace
• Flux Quantization on M-Strings