The O(dd) Story of Massive Supergravity

TL;DR

This paper explores how generalized Scherk-Schwarz reductions of heterotic string theory lead to massive gauged supergravities that maintain O(d,d+16) symmetry, with U-duality acting on mass parameters and influencing the scalar potential.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for constructing massive gauged supergravities with manifest O(d,d+16) symmetry, extending the understanding of duality symmetries in string theory reductions.

Findings

Massive gauged supergravities preserve O(d,d+16) symmetry.

U-duality transformations act on mass parameters.

Mass parameters define scalar potential and nonabelian structure constants.

Abstract

The low energy effective action describing the standard Kaluza-Klein reduction of heterotic string theory on a d-torus possesses a manifest O(d,d+16) symmetry. We consider generalized Scherk-Schwarz reductions of the heterotic string to construct massive gauged supergravities. We show that the resulting action can still be written in a manifestly O(d,d+16) invariant form, however, the U-duality transformations also act on the mass parameters. The latter play the dual role of defining the scalar potential and the nonabelian structure constants. We conjecture that just as for the standard reduction, a subgroup of this symmetry corresponds to an exact duality symmetry of the heterotic string theory.