Introductory Lectures on Extended Supergravities and Gaugings

TL;DR

This paper provides a pedagogical introduction to gauged supergravities, explaining how scalar potentials are introduced via gauging procedures in extended supergravity theories, with applications to string compactifications.

Contribution

It offers a clear, introductory overview of gauged supergravities, focusing on their construction and relevance to string theory and phenomenology.

Findings

Gauged supergravities allow scalar potentials without breaking supersymmetry.

Gauging promotes global symmetries to local ones using vector fields.

Applications include string flux compactifications and model building.

Abstract

In an ungauged supergravity theory, the presence of a \emph{scalar potential} is allowed only for the minimal $\N=1$ case. In extended supergravities, a non-trivial scalar potential can be introduced without explicitly breaking supersymmetry only through the so-called \emph{gauging procedure}. The latter consists in promoting a suitable global symmetry group to local symmetry to be gauged by the vector fields of the theory. Gauged supergravities provide a valuable approach to the study of superstring flux-compactifications and the construction of phenomenologically viable, string-inspired models. The aim of these lectures is to give a pedagogical introduction to the subject of gauged supergravities, covering just selected issues and discussing some of their applications.