Half-BPS supergravity solutions and superalgebras

Abstract

We establish a correspondence between certain Lie superalgebras with 16 fermionic generators, and half-BPS solutions to supergravities with 32 supersymmetries. Three cases are discussed. For Type IIB supergravity, we relate semi-simple Lie superalgebras with 16 fermionic generators which are subalgebras of PSU(2,2|4), to families of half-BPS solutions which are invariant under , and locally asymptotic to AdS5 × S5. Similarly, for M-theory, we relate semi-simple Lie superalgebras with 16 fermionic generators which are subalgebras of OSp(8*|4) or OSp(8|4,R) to families of half-BPS solutions which are invariant under , and locally asymptotic to AdS7 × S4 or AdS4 × S7 respectively. Possible enhancements to more than 16 supersymmetries, such as 24, are also analyzed. The classification of semi-simple subalgebras of PSU(2,2|4), OSp(8*|4), and OSp(8|4,R) derived in this paper, leads us to conjecture the existence of various new families of half-BPS solutions to Type IIB supergravity and M-theory. © 2008 SISSA.