Advancements in Double & Exceptional Field Theory on Group Manifolds

TL;DR

This thesis advances Double Field Theory on group manifolds by deriving its action, exploring symmetries, and connecting it to supergravity and Exceptional Field Theory, introducing new invariances and systematic construction methods.

Contribution

It develops a generalized metric and flux formulation for DFT on group manifolds, introduces an extended strong constraint, and constructs generalized parallelizable spaces in Exceptional Field Theory.

Findings

DFT on group manifolds has a modified strong constraint and additional 2D-diffeomorphism invariance.

Explicit construction of twists for embedding tensor solutions using Maurer-Cartan forms.

Systematic construction of generalized parallelizable spaces in SL(5) EFT.

Abstract

This thesis deals with new backgrounds and concepts in Double Field Theory (DFT), a T-Duality invariant reformulation of supergravity (SUGRA). We begin by reviewing the basic concepts and notions of DFT. Afterwards, we turn to Double Field Theory on group manifolds (DFT$_{\mathrm{WZW}}$). In order to obtain its action and gauge transformations, Closed String Field Theory (CSFT) computations are performed on a worldsheet, governed by a Wess-Zumino-Witten model on a group manifold. We consider generalized diffeomorphisms and their gauge algebra, which closes under a modified strong constraint. To explore the connection between this theory and DFT, we recast it in terms of doubled generalized objects and extrapolate it to all orders in fields. This yields a generalized metric formulation and a flux formulation. We study the underlying symmetries and field equations for both formulations. A novel feature in DFT$_{\mathrm{WZW}}$ is an additional $2D$-diffeomorphism invariance. An additional extended strong constraint which breaks the $2D$-diffeomorphism invariance can be imposed to reduce DFT$_{\mathrm{WZW}}$ to DFT. Furthermore, we perform a generalized Scherk-Schwarz compactification to recover the bosonic subsector of half-maximal, electrically gauged supergravities. In this context, we show how to construct twists for each embedding tensor solution explicitly by using Maurer-Cartan forms. Finally, we generalize the ideas and notions from DFT$_\mathrm{WZW}$ to geometric Exceptional Field Theory (gEFT). This allows us to present a systematic construction for generalized parallelizable spaces in dim M = 4 SL(5) Exceptional Field Theory (EFT). These spaces permit a unified treatment of consistent maximally supersymmetric truncations of ten- and eleven-dimensional supergravity in Generalized Geometry (GG) and their systematic construction has always been an open question.