Killing superalgebras for lorentzian five-manifolds

TL;DR

This paper computes the Spencer cohomology of the minimal Poincaré superalgebra in 5D, defining Killing spinors and backgrounds, deriving supergravity field equations, and characterizing maximally supersymmetric solutions via their Killing superalgebras.

Contribution

It introduces a cohomological approach to defining Killing spinors and backgrounds in 5D supergravity, and explicitly characterizes maximally supersymmetric solutions.

Findings

Derived field equations for 5D supergravity from curvature constraints.

Defined Killing superalgebras for bosonic backgrounds.

Characterized maximally supersymmetric backgrounds and their superalgebras.

Abstract

We calculate the relevant Spencer cohomology of the minimal Poincar\'e superalgebra in 5 spacetime dimensions and use it to define Killing spinors via a connection on the spinor bundle of a 5-dimensional lorentzian spin manifold. We give a definition of bosonic backgrounds in terms of this data. By imposing constraints on the curvature of the spinor connection, we recover the field equations of minimal (ungauged) 5-dimensional supergravity, but also find a set of field equations for an $\mathfrak{sp}(1)$-valued one-form which we interpret as the bosonic data of a class of rigid supersymmetric theories on curved backgrounds. We define the Killing superalgebra of bosonic backgrounds and show that their existence is implied by the field equations. The maximally supersymmetric backgrounds are characterised and their Killing superalgebras are explicitly described as filtered deformations of the Poincar\'e superalgebra.