Supergravity Computations without Gravity Complications

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new gauge fixing method in conformal supergravity that simplifies calculations by decoupling gravity components, making it easier to derive matter field actions and phenomenological quantities.

Contribution

It proposes an alternative gauge fixing in conformal SUGRA that removes gravity complications, streamlining supergravity computations with a compact superfield formulation.

Findings

Simplified tree-level matter action in supergravity

Explicit expressions for scalar potential and fermion masses

Decoupling of gravity multiplet from matter calculations

Abstract

The conformal compensator formalism is a convenient and versatile representation of supergravity (SUGRA) obtained by gauge fixing conformal SUGRA. Unfortunately, practical calculations often require cumbersome manipulations of component field terms involving the full gravity multiplet. In this paper, we derive an alternative gauge fixing for conformal SUGRA which decouples these gravity complications from SUGRA computations. This yields a simplified tree-level action for the matter fields in SUGRA which can be expressed compactly in terms of superfields and a modified conformal compensator. Phenomenologically relevant quantities such as the scalar potential and fermion mass matrix are then straightforwardly obtained by expanding the action in superspace.