Light-cone Quantum Mechanics of the Eleven-dimensional Superparticle

TL;DR

This paper develops a light-cone gauge formalism for eleven-dimensional supergravity, enabling calculation of one-loop processes involving various supergravity fields and revealing protected terms in M-theory's effective action.

Contribution

It introduces a supersymmetric light-cone gauge formalism for eleven-dimensional supergravity and applies it to compute one-loop processes in M-theory.

Findings

Calculated one-loop processes involving gravitini, three-form potentials, and gravitons.

Identified protected terms in the M-theory effective action.

Established a formalism for manifestly supersymmetric analysis in high-dimensional supergravity.

Abstract

The linearized interactions of eleven-dimensional supergravity are obtained in a manifestly supersymmetric light-cone gauge formalism. These vertices are used to calculate certain one-loop processes involving external gravitini, antisymmetric three-form potentials and gravitons, thereby determining some protected terms in the effective action of M-theory compactified on a two-torus.