The geometry and DSZ quantization of four-dimensional supergravity

TL;DR

This paper develops a geometric, duality-covariant model of four-dimensional supergravity on arbitrary four-manifolds, incorporating the Dirac-Schwinger-Zwanziger integrality condition and analyzing U-duality groups through bundle structures.

Contribution

It introduces a differential-geometric framework for supergravity that encodes duality symmetries via Siegel principal bundles and sheaf cohomology, extending the geometric understanding of gauge potentials and dualities.

Findings

Constructed a gauge-theoretic model on arbitrary four-manifolds.

Connected U-duality groups to bundle automorphisms and cohomology classes.

Demonstrated the topological dependence of duality structures.

Abstract

We implement the Dirac-Schwinger-Zwanziger integrality condition on four-dimensional classical ungauged supergravity and use it to obtain its duality-covariant, gauge-theoretic, differential-geometric model on an oriented four-manifold $M$ of arbitrary topology. Classical bosonic supergravity is completely determined by a submersion $\pi$ over $M$ equipped with a complete Ehresmann connection, a vertical euclidean metric, and a vertically-polarized flat symplectic vector bundle $\Xi$. Building on these structures, we implement the Dirac-Schwinger-Zwanziger integrality condition through the choice of an element in the degree-two sheaf cohomology group with coefficients in a locally constant sheaf $\mathcal{L}\subset \Xi$ valued in the groupoid of integral symplectic spaces. We show that this data determines a Siegel principal bundle $P_{\mathfrak{t}}$ of fixed type $\mathfrak{t}\in \mathbb{Z}^{n_v}$ whose connections provide the global geometric description of the local electromagnetic gauge potentials of the theory. Furthermore, we prove that the Maxwell gauge equations of the theory reduce to the polarized self-duality condition determined by $\Xi$ on the connections of $P_{\mathfrak{t}}$. In addition, we investigate the continuous and discrete U-duality groups of the theory, characterizing them through short exact sequences and realizing the latter through the gauge group of $P_{\mathfrak{t}}$ acting on its adjoint bundle. This elucidates the geometric origin of U-duality, which we explore in several examples, illustrating its dependence on the topology of the fiber bundles $\pi$ and $P_{\mathfrak{t}}$ as well as on the isomorphism type of $\mathcal{L}$.