The role of duality symmetries in the construction of counterterms for maximal supergravity theories is discussed in a field-theoretic context from different points of view. These are: dimensional reduction, the question of whether appropriate superspace measures exist and information about non-linear invariants that can be gleaned from linearised ones. The former allows us to prove that F-term...

Using the simple setting of 3D N = 1 supergravity, we show how the tensor calculus of supergravity can be extended to manifolds with boundary. We present an extension of the standard F -density formula which yields supersymmetric bulk-plus-boundary actions. To construct additional separately supersymmetric boundary actions, we decompose bulk supergravity and bulk matter multiplets into co-dimen...

In this paper we shall show how to construct two new superstring theories in dimensions 12 and 16 which satisfy the Lorenz symmetries in 4 dimensions after compactification but which satisfy different symmetry groups before compactification. The arguments are also applied to supergravity theory. We write the first few terms of these new supergravity actions. The new supergravity actions can be ...

We present a theory of N = 2 chiral supergravity in (10 + 2)-dimensions. This formulation is similar to N = 1 supergravity presented recently using null-vectors in 12D. In order to see the consistency of this theory, we perform a simple dimensional reduction to ten-dimensions, reproducing the type IIB chiral supergravity. We also show that our su-pergravity can be consistent background for supe...

These notes are based on lectures given at the Clay School on Geometry and String Theory, Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, 25 March 19 April 2002. They attempt to provide an elementary and somewhat self contained discussion of the construction of supergravity solutions describing branes wrapping calibrated cycles, emphasising the geometrical aspects and focusing on D=11 supergravity. Followin...

We study quintessence models using low energy supergravity inspired from string theory. We consider effective supergravity with two scales mS , the string scale, and mPl , the Planck scale, and show that quintessence naturally arises from a supersymmetry breaking hidden sector. As long as supersymmetry is broken by the F-term of a Polonyi-like field coupled to the quintessence field in the Kähl...

The theory of SU(2) gauged seven-dimensional supergravity is obtained by compactifying ten dimensional N = 1 supergravity on the group manifold SU(2).