Supersymmetric Mechanics in Superspace

TL;DR

This paper provides an overview of supersymmetric mechanics in one dimension using superfield methods, emphasizing N=4 and N=8 cases, and aims to clarify the structure and techniques of these theories for young researchers.

Contribution

It offers a personal, detailed perspective on superfield formulations of one-dimensional supersymmetric theories, focusing on N=4 and N=8 cases, with an emphasis on practical calculation methods.

Findings

Superfield approach is preferable for extended supersymmetry in d=1.

Detailed calculations illustrate the structure of N=4 and N=8 supersymmetric models.

Focus on nonlinear realizations method without formal proofs.

Abstract

These Lectures have been given at Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati in the month of March, 2005. The main idea was to provide our young collegues, who joined us in our attempts to understand the structure of $N$-extended supersymmetric one-dimensional systems, with short descriptions of the methods and techniques we use. This was reflected in the choice of material and in the style of presentation. We base our treatment mainly on the superfield point of view. Moreover, we prefer to deal with N=4 and N=8 superfields. At present, the exists an extensive literature on the components approach to extended supersymmetric theories in $d=1$ while the manifestly supersymmetric formulation in terms of properly constrained superfields is much less known. Nevertheless, we believe that just such formulations are preferable. In order to make these Lectures more or less self-consistent, we started from the simplest examples of one-dimensional supersymmetric theories and paid a lot of attention to the peculiarities of $d=1$ supersymmetry. From time to time we presented the calculations in a very detailed way. In other cases we omitted the details and gave only the final answers. In any case these Lectures cannot be considered as a textbook in any respect. They can be considered as our personal point of view on the one-dimensional superfield theories and on the methods and techniques we believe to be important. Especially, all this concerns Section 3, were we discuss the nonlinear realizations method. We did not present any proofs in this Section. Instead we focused on the details of calculations. Finally, we apologize for the absolutely incomplete list of References.