Eur. Phys. J. C (2019) 79:898
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-7421-0
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
D = 4 supergravity from the Maxwell-Weyl superalgebra
Salih Kibaro˘glu
1,2,a
, Oktay Cebecio˘glu
1,b
1
Department of Physics, Kocaeli University, 41380 Kocaeli, Turkey
2
Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Wrocław, Pl. Maksa Borna 9, Pl–50-204 Wrocław, Poland
Received: 27 December 2018 / Accepted: 24 October 2019 / Published online: 7 November 2019
© The Author(s) 2019
Abstract We present the construction of the first-order
D = 4, N = 1 supergravity action by gauging the Maxwell-
Weyl superalgebra. The four-form lagrangian is constructed
by using the curvatures of the algebra and the local scale
invariance of the action is achieved through the introduction
of a compensating scalar field. Finally, we find the general-
ized Einstein equation with a coordinate dependent cosmo-
logical term.
1 Introduction
The Maxwell symmetry appears if the Minkowski space-
time is filled with an additional background field [1,2]. In
other words, this symmetry can be interpreted as a modifi-
cation of the Poincaré symmetry which describes the empty
Minkowski space-time, and the translation generators are no
longer abelian but satisfy [3],
[
P
a
, P
b
]
= iZ
ab
, (1)
where the six additional antisymmetric generators Z
ab
trans-
form as a second rank tensor under the action of Lorentz
group. In early studies, this background field was associated
with constant electromagnetic (EM) fields. Nowadays inter-
pretation of the background field as well as this new alge-
bra have opened up new directions. For example, this alge-
bra was extensively studied to generalize Einstein’s theory
of gravity. In [4–7], the generalized cosmological constant
and additional interaction terms were derived alternatively by
extending the theory of gravity based on the Maxwell alge-
bra. This fact may have a fundamental importance since the
studies and observations on the cosmological constant, the
dark energy and the cosmic microwave background indicate
that there should be a background field filling our space-time.
We also know that there is a close connection between cos-
a
e-mail: salihkibaroglu@gmail.com
b
e-mail: ocebecioglu@kocaeli.edu.tr
mological constant and dark energy [8,9], so the Maxwell
symmetries may provide a powerful geometrical framework
for these significant topics.
The supersymmetric extension of the Maxwell algebra
was presented in [10] and it describes the geometry of D = 4,
N = 1 superspace with a constant abelian supersymmetric
gauge field background. This modification of superspace is
known as the superMaxwell space. Contrary to the conven-
tional superalgebras, this superalgebra contains two Majo-
rana spinor generators Q
α
and
α
. This superalgebra can
be considered as a generalization of the D’Auria-Fré super-
algebra [11] and the Green algebra [12] which have addi-
tional fermionic generators. Besides, the Maxwell superalge-
bras were also obtained in [13,14] by using algebraic expan-
sion methods [15,16]. In [17], the authors derived the first
order D = 4, N = 1 pure supergravity lagrangian four-
form by using the curvatures of the Maxwell superalgebra.
Subsequently, the generalized supersymmetric cosmological
constant was constructed based on the Maxwell superalge-
bras in N = 1 case [18,19]. Beyond the case of N = 1,
the N −extended Maxwell superalgebras were considered in
[13,14,20,21]. Recent developments and some interesting
studies about the Maxwell (super)algebras can be found in
[22–35].
The Weyl enlargement of the Maxwell algebra, which
named as the Maxwell-Weyl algebra MW, and its super-
symmetric extension sMW were firstly presented in [24].
In our earlier work, we constructed a gauge theory of gravity
based on MW and obtained the generalized Einstein equa-
tion with cosmological constant [7]. The main purpose of this
letter is to establish a gauge theory of gravity based on sMW
and to construct the first-order D = 4, N = 1 supergravity
action.
The paper organized as follows. In Sect. 2,wegivea
brief summary of the MW algebra and its gravity action. In
Sect. 3, we introduce sMW algebra and obtain transforma-
tion of the gauge fields, the curvatures and the Bianchi iden-
tities of the algebra. In Sect. 4, the supergravity action is con-
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