Minimal Massive Supergravity

TL;DR

Minimal massive supergravity in three dimensions introduces a new action with supersymmetric extension, featuring vacua that break supersymmetry spontaneously and exhibit positive energy gravitons, while supersymmetric vacua have negative central charges.

Contribution

The paper presents a new action formulation for minimal massive supergravity and constructs its supersymmetric extension, revealing novel vacuum properties.

Findings

Vacua with positive energy gravitons break supersymmetry spontaneously.

Supersymmetric vacua have negative central charge.

New higher order extensions of the model are proposed.

Abstract

Minimal massive gravity in three dimensions propagates a single massive spin-2 mode around an AdS vacuum. It is distinguished by allowing for vacua with positive central charges of the asymptotic conformal algebra and a bulk graviton of positive energy. We present a new action for the model (and its higher order extensions) in terms of a dreibein and an independent spin connection. From this, we construct its supersymmetric extension. Surprisingly, all vacua complying with bulk and boundary unitarity appear to break supersymmetry spontaneously. In contrast, all supersymmetric vacua have a negative central charge whenever the bulk graviton has positive energy.