Unconventional Supersymmetry via the Dressing Field Method

TL;DR

This paper clarifies the formal basis of unconventional supersymmetry by linking it to the Dressing Field Method, enabling a more systematic and principled approach to gauge-invariant supersymmetric field theories.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the matter ansatz in unconventional supersymmetry is a special case of the Dressing Field Method, providing a clearer conceptual foundation.

Findings

The matter ansatz is a special case of the Dressing Field Method.

The Dressing Field Method systematically reveals gauge-invariant content.

Unconventional supersymmetry can now be understood more rigorously.

Abstract

We re-construe unconventional supersymmetry, a notion introduced by Alvarez-Valenzuela-Zanelli (AVZ), as an attempt to use the framework of supersymmetric field theory to describe fermionic matter fields and bosonic gauge fields in a unified way, as parts of a single superconnection. It hinges upon the so-called matter ansatz. Unfortunately, the formal and conceptual status of the ansatz has remained unclear, preventing unconventional supersymmetry to be used in a principled way as a general approach beyond the model in which it was first considered. In this letter, we lift this restriction by showing that the ansatz is a special case of the Dressing Field Method, a new systematic tool to exhibit the gauge-invariant content of general-relativistic gauge field theories.