A Supergravity Primer: From Geometrical Principles To The Final Lagrangian

Description

This book is devoted to a pedagogical introduction to supergravity from a practical perspective. As a particular feature of the book, the authors provide explicit details, which makes the computations easier to follow for the interested reader. Each chapter has summary tables, which contain the main results and, in addition, we have collected important or additional material in the appendix. In the first part of the book, the N=1 supergravity Lagrangian in four spacetime dimensions is derived. Closely following the reference of Wess and Bagger, we use the superspace approach. All steps, from the geometric principles of curved superspace to the field redefinition necessary to obtain a correctly normalised Lagrangian, are carefully analysed. Comparisons with other methods, such as conformal supergravity, are also given. In the second part of the book, we address more phenomenological aspects of supergravity such as supersymmetry breaking, no-scale supergravity, super-Higgs mechanism, etc. Finally, the relationship between supergravity and particle physics, and cosmology are analysed. Preface Acknowledgments Contents List of Tables Chapter 1: Introduction and outlook of the book Chapter 2: A brief summary of N = 1 supersymmetry Chapter 3: Curved superspace - Geometrical principles Chapter 4: Superfields in curved superspace Chapter 5: General principles to construct invariant actions Chapter 6: Explicit computation of the supergravity action Chapter 7: Supergravity breaking Chapter 8: Supergravity in particles physics and cosmology Appendix A: Conventions Appendix B: Some properties of the Lorentz group Appendix C: Useful identities Appendix D: Supermultiplets: conventions and main results Appendix E: How to construct an action in supergravity Appendix F: Kahler manifolds Appendix G: Two-loop renormalisation group equations Appendix H: Lie superalgebras associated to supergravity and supersymmetry Bibliography Index