Unconventional SUSY and Conventional Physics: A Pedagogical Review

TL;DR

This paper explores an unconventional approach to supersymmetry (SUSY), where SUSY is realized through a Lie superalgebra-valued connection, avoiding the typical particle super-partner doubling and linking SUSY to the vacuum state.

Contribution

It introduces a novel representation of SUSY connecting spacetime and internal symmetries via gauge fields, providing simpler models that resemble standard quantum field theories.

Findings

SUSY can be realized without super-partner doubling.

Examples include a 2+1D system modeling graphene and a 3+1D conformal gravity extension.

SUSY emerges as a contingent symmetry depending on the vacuum state.

Abstract

In supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model, the observed particles come in fermion-boson pairs necessary for the realization of supersymmetry (SUSY). In spite of the expected abundance of super-partners for all the known particles, not a single supersymmetric pair has been reported to date. Although a hypothetical SUSY breaking mechanism, operating at high energy inaccessible to current experiments cannot be ruled out, this reduces SUSY's predictive power and it is unclear whether SUSY, in its standard form, can help reducing the remaining puzzles of the standard model (SM). Here we argue that SUSY can be realized in a different way, connecting spacetime and internal bosonic symmetries, combining bosonic gauge fields and fermionic matter particles in a single gauge field, a Lie superalgebra-valued connection. In this unconventional representation, states do not come in SUSY pairs, avoiding the doubling of particles and fields and SUSY is not a fully off-shell invariance of the action. The resulting systems are remarkably simple, closely resembling a standard quantum field theory and SUSY still emerges as a contingent symmetry that depends on the features of the vacuum/ground state. We illustrate the general construction with two examples: i) A 2+1 dimensional system based on the $osp(2,2|2)$ superalgebra, including Lorentz and $u(1)$ generators that describes graphene; ii) A supersymmetric extension of 3+1 conformal gravity with an $SU(2,2|2)$ connection that describes a gauge theory with an emergent chiral symmetry breaking, coupled to gravity. The extensions to higher odd and even dimensions, as well as the extensions to accommodate more general internal symmetries are also outlined.