Non-abelian fermionic T-duality in supergravity

Field transformation rules of the standard fermionic T-duality require fermionic isometries to anticommute, which leads to complexification of the Killing spinors and results in complex valued dual backgrounds. We generalize the field transformations to the setting with non-anticommuting fermionic isometries and show that the resulting backgrounds are solutions of double field theory. Explicit examples of non-abelian fermionic T-dualities that produce real backgrounds are given. Some of our examples can be bosonic T-dualized into usual supergravity solutions, while the others are genuinely non-geometric. Comparison with alternative treatment based on sigma models on supercosets shows consistency.

Killing superalgebras for lorentzian five-manifolds

We calculate the relevant Spencer cohomology of the minimal Poincaré superalgebra in 5 spacetime dimensions and use it to define Killing spinors via a connection on the spinor bundle of a 5-dimensional lorentzian spin manifold. We give a definition of bosonic backgrounds in terms of this data. By imposing constraints on the curvature of the spinor connection, we recover the field equations of minimal (ungauged) 5-dimensional supergravity, but also find a set of field equations for an $$ \mathfrak{sp} $$ sp (1)-valued one-form which we interpret as the bosonic data of a class of rigid supersymmetric theories on curved backgrounds. We define the Killing superalgebra of bosonic backgrounds and show that their existence is implied by the field equations. The maximally supersymmetric backgrounds are characterised and their Killing superalgebras are explicitly described as filtered deformations of the Poincaré superalgebra.

N = 4 near-horizon geometries in D = 11 supergravity

Extreme near-horizon geometries in D = 11 supergravity preserving four supersymmetries are classified. It is shown that the Killing spinors fall into three possible orbits, corresponding to pairs of spinors defined on the spatial cross-sections of the horizon which have isotropy groups SU(3), G2, or SU(4). In each case, the conditions on the geometry and the 4-form flux are determined. The integrability conditions obtained from the Killing spinor equations are also investigated.

Non-Riemannian isometries from double field theory

We explore the notion of isometries in non-Riemannian geometries. Such geometries include and generalise the backgrounds of non-relativistic string theory, and they can be naturally described using the formalism of double field theory. Adopting this approach, we first solve the corresponding Killing equations for constant flat non-Riemannian backgrounds and show that they admit an infinite-dimensional algebra of isometries which includes a particular type of supertranslations. These symmetries correspond to known worldsheet Noether symmetries of the Gomis-Ooguri non-relativistic string, which we now interpret as isometries of its non-Riemannian doubled background. We further consider the extension to supersymmetric double field theory and show that the corresponding Killing spinors can depend arbitrarily on the non-Riemannian directions, leading to “supersupersymmetries” that square to supertranslations.

Spinors of real type as polyforms and the generalized Killing equation

We develop a new framework for the study of generalized Killing spinors, where every generalized Killing spinor equation, possibly with constraints, can be formulated equivalently as a system of partial differential equations for a polyform satisfying algebraic relations in the Kähler–Atiyah bundle constructed by quantizing the exterior algebra bundle of the underlying manifold. At the core of this framework lies the characterization, which we develop in detail, of the image of the spinor squaring map of an irreducible Clifford module $$\Sigma $$ Σ of real type as a real algebraic variety in the Kähler–Atiyah algebra, which gives necessary and sufficient conditions for a polyform to be the square of a real spinor. We apply these results to Lorentzian four-manifolds, obtaining a new description of a real spinor on such a manifold through a certain distribution of parabolic 2-planes in its cotangent bundle. We use this result to give global characterizations of real Killing spinors on Lorentzian four-manifolds and of four-dimensional supersymmetric configurations of heterotic supergravity. In particular, we find new families of Einstein and non-Einstein four-dimensional Lorentzian metrics admitting real Killing spinors, some of which are deformations of the metric of $$\text {AdS}_4$$ AdS 4 space-time.

Skew Killing spinors in four dimensions

This paper is devoted to the classification of 4-dimensional Riemannian spin manifolds carrying skew Killing spinors. A skew Killing spinor $$\psi $$ ψ is a spinor that satisfies the equation $$\nabla _X\psi =AX\cdot \psi $$ ∇ X ψ = A X · ψ with a skew-symmetric endomorphism A. We consider the degenerate case, where the rank of A is at most two everywhere and the non-degenerate case, where the rank of A is four everywhere. We prove that in the degenerate case the manifold is locally isometric to the Riemannian product $${\mathbb {R}}\times N$$ R × N with N having a skew Killing spinor and we explain under which conditions on the spinor the special case of a local isometry to $${\mathbb {S}}^2\times {\mathbb {R}}^2$$ S 2 × R 2 occurs. In the non-degenerate case, the existence of skew Killing spinors is related to doubly warped products whose defining data we will describe.

Supersymmetric traversable wormholes

We study traversable wormhole solutions in pure gauged N = 2 supergravity with and without electromagnetic fields, which are locally isometric under SO(2, 1) × SO(1, 1). The model allows for 1/2-BPS wormhole solutions whose corresponding globally defined Killing spinors are presented. A non-contractible cycle can be obtained by compactifying one of the coordinates which leaves the residual supersymmetry unaffected, although not all the isometries will remain realized globally. The wormholes connect two asymptotic, locally AdS4 regions and depend on certain electric and magnetic charge parameters and, implicitly, on the range of the compact coordinate around the throat. We provide an analysis of the boundary of the spacetime and show that it can be either disconnected or not, depending on the values of the parameters in the metric. Finally, we show how a class of these space-times avoid a topological censorship theorem.