F(R) supergravity

TL;DR

This paper reviews F(R) supergravity, a supersymmetric extension of modified gravity theories, demonstrating its classical equivalence to standard supergravity coupled with a chiral superfield and exploring conditions for a vanishing cosmological constant.

Contribution

It introduces a supersymmetric formulation of F(R) gravity in four dimensions using curved superspace and proves its classical equivalence to standard supergravity with a chiral superfield.

Findings

F(R) supergravity is invariant under local N=1 supersymmetry.

It is classically equivalent to standard N=1 supergravity coupled to a chiral superfield.

Conditions for a no-scale F(R) supergravity with zero cosmological constant are identified.

Abstract

We review the F(R) supergravity recently proposed in Phys. Lett. B674 (2009) 59 and Class. Quantum Grav. 26 (2009) 135006. Our construction supersymmetrizes popular f(R) theories of modified gravity in four spacetime dimensions. We use curved superspace of N=1 Poincar'e supergravity in its minimal (2nd order) formulation so that our F(R) supergravity action is manifestly invariant under local N=1 supersymmetry. We prove that the F(R) supergravity is classically equivalent to the standard N=1 Poincar'e supergravity (minimally) coupled to a dynamical chiral superfield, via a Legendre-Weyl transform in superspace. A K"ahler potential, a superpotential and a scalar potential of the chiral superfield are governed by a single holomorphic function. We find the conditions of vanishing cosmological constant without fine-tuning, which define a no-scale F(R) supergravity.