Superfield Formulation of Nonlinear N=4 Supermultiplets

TL;DR

This paper introduces a unified superfield framework for N=4 supermultiplets in one dimension, enabling the systematic construction of both known and new linear and nonlinear supermultiplets, including hypermultiplets.

Contribution

It presents a novel superfield formulation that unifies and extends the classification of N=4 supermultiplets in one dimension, including explicit nonlinear examples.

Findings

Reproduces all known linear and nonlinear N=4 supermultiplets.

Provides a systematic method to construct new supermultiplets via solutions to a system of equations.

Explicitly constructs nonlinear N=4 hypermultiplets.

Abstract

We propose a unified superfield formulation of N=4 off-shell supermultiplets in one spacetime dimension using the standard N=4 superspace. The main idea of our approach is a "gluing" together of two linear supermultiplets along their fermions. The functions defining such a gluing obey a system of equations. Each solution of this system provides a new supermultiplet, linear or nonlinear, modulo equivalence transformations. In such a way we reproduce all known linear and nonlinear N=4, d=1 supermultiplets and propose some new ones. Particularly interesting is an explicit construction of nonlinear N=4 hypermultiplets.