No Arabic abstract
We develop the general theory of Noether symmetries for constrained systems. In our derivation, the Dirac bracket structure with respect to the primary constraints appears naturally and plays an important role in the characterization of the conserved quantities associated to these Noether symmetries. The issue of projectability of these symmetries from tangent space to phase space is fully analyzed, and we give a geometrical interpretation of the projectability conditions in terms of a relation between the Noether conserved quantity in tangent space and the presymplectic form defined on it. We also examine the enlarged formalism that results from taking the Lagrange multipliers as new dynamical variables; we find the equation that characterizes the Noether symmetries in this formalism. The algebra of generators for Noether symmetries is discussed in both the Hamiltonian and Lagrangian formalisms. We find that a frequent source for the appearance of open algebras is the fact that the transformations of momenta in phase space and tangent space only coincide on shell. Our results apply with no distinction to rigid and gauge symmetries; for the latter case we give a general proof of existence of Noether gauge symmetries for theories with first and second class constraints that do not exhibit tertiary constraints in the stabilization algorithm. Among some examples that illustrate our results, we study the Noether gauge symmetries of the Abelian Chern-Simons theory in $2n+1$ dimensions. An interesting feature of this example is that its primary constraints can only be identified after the determination of the secondary constraint. The example is worked out retaining all the original set of variables.
The equivalence between Chern-Simons and Einstein-Hilbert actions in three dimensions established by A.~Achucarro and P.~K.~Townsend (1986) and E.~Witten (1988) is generalized to the off-shell case. The technique is also generalized to the Yang-Mills action in four dimensions displaying de Sitter gauge symmetry. It is shown that, in both cases, we can directly identify a gravity action while the gauge symmetry can generate spacetime local isometries as well as diffeomorphisms. The price we pay for working in an off-shell scenario is that specific geometric constraints are needed. These constraints can be identified with foliations of spacetime. The special case of spacelike leafs evolving in time is studied. Finally, the whole set up is analyzed under fiber bundle theory. In this analysis we show that a traditional gauge theory, where the gauge field does not influence in spacetime dynamics, can be (for specific cases) consistently mapped into a gravity theory in the first order formalism.
In theories with discrete Abelian gauge groups, requiring that black holes be able to lose their charge as they evaporate leads to an upper bound on the product of a charged particles mass and the cutoff scale above which the effective description of the theory breaks down. This suggests that a non-trivial version of the Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) may also apply to gauge symmetries that are discrete, despite there being no associated massless field, therefore pushing the conjecture beyond the slogan that `gravity is the weakest force. Here, we take a step towards making this expectation more precise by studying $mathbb{Z}_N$ and $mathbb{Z}_2^N$ gauge symmetries realised via theories of spontaneous symmetry breaking. We show that applying the WGC to a dual description of an Abelian Higgs model leads to constraints that allow us to saturate but not violate existing bounds on discrete symmetries based on black hole arguments. In this setting, considering the effect of discrete hair on black holes naturally identifies the cutoff of the effective theory with the scale of spontaneous symmetry breaking, and provides a mechanism through which discrete hair can be lost without modifying the gravitational sector. We explore the possible implications of these arguments for understanding the smallness of the weak scale compared to $M_{Pl}$.
In four spacetime dimensions, all ${cal N} =1$ supergravity-matter systems can be formulated in the so-called $mathsf{U}(1)$ superspace proposed by Howe in 1981. This paper is devoted to the study of those geometric structures which characterise a background $mathsf{U}(1)$ superspace and are important in the context of supersymmetric field theory in curved space. We introduce (conformal) Killing tensor superfields $ell_{(alpha_1 dots alpha_m) ({dot alpha}_1 dots {dot alpha}_n)}$, with $m$ and $n$ non-negative integers, $m+n>0$, and elaborate on their significance in the following cases: (i) $m=n=1$; (ii) $m-1=n=0$; and (iii) $m=n>1$. The (conformal) Killing vector superfields $ell_{alpha dot alpha}$ generate the (conformal) isometries of curved superspace, which are symmetries of every (conformal) supersymmetric field theory. The (conformal) Killing spinor superfields $ell_{alpha }$ generate extended (conformal) supersymmetry transformations. The (conformal) Killing tensor superfields with $m=n>1$ prove to generate all higher symmetries of the (massless) massive Wess-Zumino operator.
In this paper we investigate a particular ghost-free bimetric theory that exhibits the partially massless (PM) symmetry at quadratic order. At this order the global SO(1,4) symmetry of the theory is enhanced to SO(1,5). We show that this global symmetry becomes inconsistent at cubic order, in agreement with a previous calculation. Furthermore, we find that the PM symmetry of this theory cannot be extended beyond cubic order in the PM field. More importantly, it is shown that the PM symmetry cannot be extended to quartic order in any theory with one massless and one massive spin-2 fields.
We show that the four-dimensional Lovelock-Cartan action can be derived from a massless gauge theory for the $SO(1,3)$ group with an additional BRST trivial part. The model is originally composed by a topological sector and a BRST exact piece and has no explicit dependence on the metric, the vierbein or a mass parameter. The vierbein is introduced together with a mass parameter through some BRST trivial constraints. The effect of the constraints is to identify the vierbein with some of the additional fields, transforming the original action into the Lovelock-Cartan one. In this scenario, the mass parameter is identified with Newtons constant while the gauge field is identified with the spin-connection. The symmetries of the model are also explored. Moreover, the extension of the model to a quantum version is qualitatively discussed.