Is N = 8 supergravity a finite field theory?

✍ Scribed by K.S. Stelle

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 152 KB
• Volume: 57
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0015-8208
• DOI: 10.1002/prop.200900063

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Advances in calculational technique permit the study of ultraviolet structure in maximal super Yang‐Mills and maximal supergravity theories at heretofore unattainable loop orders. Hints from string theory suggest that maximal supergravity might have a similar ultraviolet behavior in D = 4 spacetime dimensions as maximal super Yang‐Mills theory and so be ultraviolet convergent. Yet what is known of field theoretic nonrenormalization theorems suggests only that ${1 \over 2}$‐BPS counterterms are excluded. A key test of the relative finiteness properties of the two theories will be the ultraviolet divergences in D = 5 maximal supergravity at the four‐loop level.