Eleven-dimensional supergravity reveals large exceptional symmetries upon reduction, in accordance with the U-duality groups of M-theory, but their higher-dimensional geometric origin has remained a mystery. In this letter, we show that D = 11 supergravity can be extended to be fully covariant under the exceptional groups E n(n), n = 6, 7, 8. Motivated by a similar formulation of double field t...

A supersymmetric Randall-Sundrum brane-world demands that not merely the graviton but the entire supergravity multiplet be trapped on the brane. To demonstrate this, we present a complete ansatz for the reduction of (D = 5, N = 4) gauged supergravity to (D = 4, N = 2) ungauged supergravity in the Randall-Sundrum geometry. We verify that it is consistent to lowest order in fermion terms. In part...

The superform construction of supergravity actions, christened the “ectoplasm method,” is based on the use of a closed super d-form in the case of d space-time dimensions. In known examples, such superforms are obtained by iteratively solving nontrivial cohomological problems. The latter usually makes this scheme no less laborious than the normal coordinate method for deriving component actions...

We construct two classes of higher-derivative supergravity theories generalizing Einstein supergravity. We explore their dynamical content as well as their vacuum structure. The first class is found to be equivalent to Einstein supergravity coupled to a single chiral superfield. It has a unique stable vacuum solution except in a special case, when it becomes identical to a simple no-scale theor...