Magnetic charges in the AdS(4) superalgebra osp(4|2)

TL;DR

This paper explores how to incorporate magnetic charges into the AdS(4) superalgebra, proposing a vector charge extension to preserve covariance and analyzing BPS states and their relation to black hole solutions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach by promoting magnetic charges to vector charges, enlarging the superalgebra to maintain covariance and classify BPS states.

Findings

Magnetic charges can be incorporated as vector charges in the superalgebra.

BPS states are classified by the boundary of a convex cone related to Jordan algebra.

The extended algebra includes known superalgebra extensions with brane charges.

Abstract

We discuss the issue of how to include magnetic charges in the AdS(4) superalgebra osp(4|2). It is shown that the usual way of introducing a pseudoscalar central charge on the right hand side of the basic anticommutator does not work, because this breaks SO(2,3) covariance. We propose a way out by promoting the magnetic charge to a vector charge, which amounts to enlarge osp(4|2) to the superconformal algebra su(2,2|1). The conditions for 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 BPS states are then analyzed. These states form the boundary of the convex cone associated with the Jordan algebra of 4x4 complex hermitian matrices. An Inonu-Wigner contraction of the constructed superalgebra yields a known extension of the Poincare' superalgebra containing electric and magnetic 0-brane charges as well as string- and space-filling 3-brane charges. As an example, we show how some supersymmetric AdS(4) black holes fit into the classification scheme of BPS states.