Physics Letters B 772 (2017) 731–736
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Physics Letters B
www.elsevier.com/locate/physletb
Supersymmetric self-dual Yang–Mills theories from local nilpotent
fermionic symmetry
Hitoshi Nishino
∗
, Subhash Rajpoot
Department of Physics & Astronomy, California State University, 1250 Bellflower Boulevard, Long Beach, CA 90840, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received
24 May 2017
Received
in revised form 16 July 2017
Accepted
21 July 2017
Available
online 26 July 2017
Editor:
M. Cveti
ˇ
c
Keywords:
Supersymmetry
Nilpotent
fermionic symmetry
Non-Abelian
interactions
Vector
spinor
Four,
seven and eight dimensions
Integrable
systems
We present a system of a self-dual vector-spinor and a self-dual Yang–Mills (YM) field with local
nilpotent fermionic symmetry (but not supersymmetry) in D = 2 + 2dimensions that embeds self-dual
supersymmetric YM theory as a special set of exact solutions. Our system has local nilpotent fermionic
symmetry generator N
α
I
satisfying the algebra {N
α
I
, N
β
J
} = 0with the adjoint index I of an arbitrary
gauge group. Our original field content in D = 2 + 2is ( A
μ
I
, ψ
μ
I
, χ
I
), where A
μ
I
is the usual YM
gauge field, ψ
μ
I
is a Majorana–Weyl vector-spinor gauging N
α
I
, while χ
I
is a Majorana–Weyl spinor
compensator field needed for consistency. This system embeds self-dual supersymmetric YM system
with the field content (A
μ
I
, λ
−
I
) in D = 2 + 2. As other examples, we consider similar systems in
D = 7 + 0and D = 8 + 0 embedding respectively N = 1/8 + 7/8and N = (1/8, 1) supersymmetric YM
theories with generalized self-dualities, such as F
μν
I
= (1/2) f
μν
ρσ
F
ρσ
I
with a generalized octonionic
structure constant f
μν
ρσ
. This result strongly suggests that our local nilpotent fermionic symmetry is
more fundamental than the supersymmetric self-dual Yang–Mills systems that are supposed to generate
all supersymmetric integrable models in D < 4.
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP
3
.
1. Introduction
According to Atiyah’s conjecture [1], self-dual Yang–Mills
(SDYM)
theory in D = 2 + 2with the signature (+, +, −, −) is
the ‘Master-Theory’ of all integrable models in D ≤ 3. In 1990’s,
this was further generalized to SD supersymmetric YM theories in
D = 2 + 2 [2–4]. This direction was also motivated by the devel-
opment
in superstring theory that the consistent backgrounds for
N = 2string theory should be SD gravity field for closed N = 2
strings,
SDYM field for open strings, and SDYM plus gravity in
the case of N = 2heterotic strings in D ≤ 4 [5]. Furthermore,
integrable models are unified by topological strings [6] with (non-
critical)
strings [7], and matrix models [8] for M-theory [9].
In
our recent paper [10], however, we presented a slightly dif-
ferent
approach to these developments. We demonstrated that no
supersymmetry
is actually needed for such a ‘Master-Theory’, even
if supersymmetries in descendant theories are required [10]. We
can start with a system only with local nilpotent fermionic sym-
metry
given in [11] (but not supersymmetry), and we can still
generate supersymmetric integrable models in lower dimensions.
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail
addresses: hnishino@csulb.edu (H. Nishino), subhash.rajpoot@csulb.edu
(S. Rajpoot).
This is confirmed in [10] by explicit examples of integrable models
in D ≤ 3 generated by SDYM system in D = 2 + 2only with local
nilpotent fermionic symmetry.
Moreover,
in our subsequent paper [12], we have further shown
that even supergravity theory in 4D and in 10D can be realized
as a special case of local nilpotent fermionic symmetry. We con-
firmed
that the Deser–Zumino consistency-conditions [13] for the
divergence of vector-spinor field equations are actually satisfied.
In other words, a vector-spinor field turned out to gauge not only
local
supersymmetry, but also local nilpotent fermionic symmetry
with consistent interactions.
In
our previous paper [10], the minimal field-content was
(A
μ
I
, ψ
μ
I
, χ
IJ
) [11], where A
μ
I
is the usual YM-gauge field, while
the vector-spinor ψ
μ
I
gauges the local nilpotent fermionic symme-
try
satisfying the algebra
{N
α
I
, N
β
J
}=0. (1.1)
In the present paper, we use an alternative field-content (A
μ
I
, ψ
μ
I
,
χ
I
), where the compensator field χ
I
has only one adjoint in-
dex.
All other features, such as ψ
μ
I
gauging the local nilpotent
fermionic symmetry (1.1), remain the same. We next show that
this system contains N = 1SD supersymmetric YM system [2,3],
as a particular set of exact solutions. In other words, we do not
need
supersymmetry, and all we need is local nilpotent fermionic
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2017.07.046
0370-2693/
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by
SCOAP
3
.