M-theory and Gauged Supergravities

TL;DR

This paper reviews how gauged supergravities emerge from M-theory, detailing reduction methods, gaugings, and solutions, and constructs various gauged supergravities with string or M-theory origins, including some without an action.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive pedagogical overview of deriving gauged supergravities from M-theory, including new constructions of gaugings and solutions, some lacking an action.

Findings

Constructed gauged maximal supergravities in diverse dimensions.

Developed techniques for consistent truncations and gaugings.

Presented new solutions like domain walls and brane distributions.

Abstract

We present a pedagogical discussion of the emergence of gauged supergravities from M-theory. First, a review of maximal supergravity and its global symmetries and supersymmetric solutions is given. Next, different procedures of dimensional reduction are explained: reductions over a torus, a group manifold and a coset manifold and reductions with a twist. Emphasis is placed on the consistency of the truncations, the resulting gaugings and the possibility to generate field equations without an action. Using these techniques, we construct a number of gauged maximal supergravities in diverse dimensions with a string or M-theory origin. One class consists of the CSO gaugings, which comprise the analytic continuations and group contractions of SO(n) gaugings. We construct the corresponding half-supersymmetric domain walls and discuss their uplift to D- and M-brane distributions. Furthermore, a number of gauged maximal supergravities are constructed that do not have an action.