Gauged supergravities from M-theory reductions

Abstract

In supergravity compactifications, there is in general no clear prescription on how to select a finite-dimensional family of metrics on the internal space, and a family of forms on which to expand the various potentials, such that the lower-dimensional effective theory is supersymmetric. We propose a finite-dimensional family of deformations for regular Sasaki-Einstein seven-manifolds M7, relevant for M-theory compactifications down to four dimensions. It consists of integrable Cauchy-Riemann structures, corresponding to complex deformations of the Calabi-Yau cone M8 over M7. The non-harmonic forms we propose are the ones contained in one of the Kohn-Rossi cohomology groups, which is finite-dimensional and naturally controls the deformations of Cauchy-Riemann structures. The same family of deformations can be also described in terms of twisted cohomology of the base M6, or in terms of Milnor cycles arising in deformations of M8. Using existing results on SU(3) structure compactifications, we briefly discuss the reduction of M-theory on our class of deformed Sasaki-Einstein manifolds to four-dimensional gauged supergravity.