Complex three-form supergravity and membranes

TL;DR

This paper explores two variants of minimal supergravity in four dimensions involving gauge three-forms, coupling them to supermembranes, and demonstrating their invariance properties and historical connections.

Contribution

It introduces super-Weyl invariant couplings of complex three-form supergravity to supermembranes and proves their kappa-invariance, connecting to earlier formulations.

Findings

Super-Weyl invariant supermembrane couplings established.

Kappa-invariance of the actions proven.

Reduction to known formulations under gauge fixing.

Abstract

There exist two variants of the old minimal formulation for ${\cal N}=1$ supergravity in four dimensions, in which one or each of the two auxiliary scalars is replaced by the field strength of a gauge three-form. These theories are known as three-form supergravity and complex three-form supergravity, respectively. For each of them, we present a super-Weyl invariant coupling of supergravity to the supermembrane and prove kappa-invariance of the resulting action. In the case of three-form supergravity, we demonstrate that the action constructed reduces to that given by Ovrut and Waldram twenty years ago upon imposing a super-Weyl gauge in which the compensating three-form superfield is set to a constant.