On the moduli space of spontaneously broken N = 8 supergravity

TL;DR

This paper studies the structure of the moduli space in N=8 supergravity with Minkowski vacua, revealing connections between vacua, the role of boundary moduli, and the instability of fully broken supersymmetric vacua under quantum corrections.

Contribution

It constructs new vacua, clarifies the relation between Cremmer-Scherk-Schwarz models and CSO* gaugings, and analyzes the stability of Minkowski vacua in N=8 supergravity.

Findings

All known and new vacua are connected via boundary moduli.

Cremmer-Scherk-Schwarz models are limits of CSO* gaugings.

Classical Minkowski vacua with full supersymmetry breaking are unstable at 1-loop.

Abstract

We analyze the moduli space of spontaneously broken N=8 supergravity theories in 4 dimensions with classical Minkowski vacua. We find that all the known classical vacua, as well as the several new ones we construct here, can be connected by sending some of the moduli to their boundary values. We also show that Cremmer-Scherk-Schwarz models can be viewed as special limits of more general CSO* gaugings, which allow for non-Abelian residual symmetries on the vacuum. Finally, we find that all the classical Minkowski vacua with fully broken supersymmetry found so far are unstable with respect to 1-loop corrections, which drive the effective potential to negative values.