We study extremal black holes, their ADM mass and area of the horizon in N = 8 supergravity. Contrary to intuition gained from N = 2, 4 theories, in N = 8 supergravity BPS states may become massless only at the boundary of moduli space. We show that stringy states described in [1], which have no mass gap and survive in the toroidal compactification in addition to massless states of perturbative N = 8 supergravity, display a null singularity in four-dimensional space-time, when viewed as solutions of N = 8 Einstein equations. We analyze known methods of resolving such singularities and explain why they do not work in D=4, N = 8 supergravity. We discuss possible implications for the issue of UV finiteness of the four-dimensional N = 8 perturbation theory.
Bianchi, M., Ferrara, S., Kallosh, R. (2010). Perturbative and non-perturbative N =8 supergravity. PHYSICS LETTERS. SECTION B, 690(3), 328-331 [10.1016/j.physletb.2010.05.049].
Perturbative and non-perturbative N =8 supergravity
BIANCHI, MASSIMO;
2010-01-01
Abstract
We study extremal black holes, their ADM mass and area of the horizon in N = 8 supergravity. Contrary to intuition gained from N = 2, 4 theories, in N = 8 supergravity BPS states may become massless only at the boundary of moduli space. We show that stringy states described in [1], which have no mass gap and survive in the toroidal compactification in addition to massless states of perturbative N = 8 supergravity, display a null singularity in four-dimensional space-time, when viewed as solutions of N = 8 Einstein equations. We analyze known methods of resolving such singularities and explain why they do not work in D=4, N = 8 supergravity. We discuss possible implications for the issue of UV finiteness of the four-dimensional N = 8 perturbation theory.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.