On the absence of BPS preonic solutions in IIA and IIB supergravities

TL;DR

This paper investigates the non-existence of BPS preonic solutions in type IIA and IIB supergravities, extending previous results and clarifying the conditions under which such solutions could exist, with implications for string theory.

Contribution

The paper extends the proof of absence of bosonic BPS preonic solutions to type IIA supergravity using the G-frame method, complementing prior results in type IIB.

Findings

No bosonic preonic solutions in type IIB supergravity.

No bosonic preonic solutions in type IIA supergravity.

Conditions for potential preonic solutions in D=11 supergravity are identified.

Abstract

We consider the present absence of 31 out of 32 supersymmetric solutions in supergravity i.e., of solutions describing BPS preons. A recent result indicates that (bosonic) BPS preonic solutions do not exist in type IIB supergravity. We reconsider this analysis by using the G-frame method, extend it to the IIA supergravity case, and show that there are no (bosonic) preonic solutions for type IIA either. For the classical D=11 supergravity no conclusion can be drawn yet, although the negative IIA results permit establishing the conditions that preonic solutions would have to satisfy. For supergravities with `stringy' corrections, the existence of BPS preonic solutions remains fully open.