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Flux and charge quantization in 11-dimensional supergravity

Determine a fully consistent, non-perturbative flux- and charge-quantization law for the C-field in D=11, N=1 supergravity that fixes the global higher gauge field content (including torsion charges) and is compatible with the supergravity equations of motion.

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Background

Flux and charge quantization is necessary to complete local higher gauge field descriptions to globally well-defined non-perturbative field theories, as it determines torsion charges and the global structure of gauge potentials.

For the 11d supergravity C-field, quantization had been discussed largely in the bosonic sector and without imposing the supergravity equations of motion. The paper proposes a duality-symmetric superspace formulation and shows how this naturally leads to a quantizable super C-field flux compatible with on-shell 11d supergravity.

References

In \S\ref{SuperFluxQuantization} we address the open problem of flux- and charge-quantization (see ) of $D=11$, $\mathcal{N}=1$ supergravity (11d SuGra , review in ), explaining how this is a necessary step towards the completion of 11d SuGra to the conjectured ``M-theory'' .

Flux Quantization on 11-dimensional Superspace (2403.16456 - Giotopoulos et al., 25 Mar 2024) in Overview and Results; Section 1 (Super-Flux Quantization of 11d SuGra)