We show that the coupling of a massive spin-2 field to undeformed $$ \mathcal{N}=1 $$ supergravity in four dimensions is unique, leading to a specific non-minimal coupling to the Riemann tensor. The massive spin-2 coupling reproduces the one of an oscillator mode in open string theory, while the massive spin-1 coupling includes a higher-derivative term that is expected to violate causality in the background of a gravitational shock wave. We argue that the resolution of causality and the unitarity bound in the Regge limit require the introduction of infinitely many higher-spin fields similar to the Regge trajectories in string theory, therefore providing an argument in favour of the string lamppost principle with minimal supersymmetry in four dimensions. To obtain this result, we construct the general stress-energy tensor multiplet for the massive spin-2 multiplet with $$ \mathcal{N}=1 $$ supersymmetry.

France

Guillaume Bossard

Gabriele Casagrande

Emilian Dudas

Adrien Loty

A unique coupling of the massive spin-2 field to supergravity

Greece

Elias Kiritsis

Francesco Nitti

Netherlands

Stefan Vandoren

Editorial: Umut Gürsoy (1975–2025)

Italy

Francesco Forti

United Kingdom

Jocelyn Monroe

Switzerland

Markus Elsing

Germany

Giulia Zanderighi

Dominik Schwarz

Christian Caron

Editorial: An overview of some article types in EPJC and introducing the new section on “Computing, Software and Data Science”

It is well-known that the number of particles produced in cosmology, commonly defined in the literature from the Fock space of the instantaneous hamiltonian of the canonically normalized fields, is ambiguous. On the other hand, the energy computed from the energy-momentum tensor should be physical. We compare the corresponding Fock spaces and relate them through a Bogolyubov transformation. We find that for particles of spin 0, 1 and 3/2 the two Fock spaces are different, whereas they are the same for spin 1/2 fermions. For spin 0 and 1, for particles of high momenta the two Fock spaces align, as intuitively expected. For the spin 3/2, one finds two puzzles. The first one is that the two corresponding Fock spaces do not match even in the limit of high momenta. The second is that whereas we provide evidence for the equivalence theorem between longitudinal gravitinos and the goldstino in terms of an exact matching between the lagrangians and the instantaneous hamiltonians for the canonically normalized fields, the energy operator computed from the Rarita-Schwinger action does not seem to be captured in a simple way by the goldstino action. Our results suggest a re-analysis of non-thermal gravitino production in cosmology.

Marco Peloso

On energy and particle production in cosmology: the particular case of the gravitino

We explore possible extensions of the Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) to scalar field theories. To avoid charged black hole remnants, the WGC requires the existence of a particle with a mass m ≤ gqM  P , with charge q and U(1) gauge coupling g, allowing the decay to shed the black hole charge. Although there is no obvious problem that arises in the absence of a U(1) charge, it has been postulated that gravity must remain the weakest force even when extended to scalar interactions. Quantifying this conjecture may be done by comparing scalar and gravitational amplitudes, or as we advocate here by comparing scattering cross sections. In theories with non-trivial field space geometries, by working out examples with perturbation theory around arbitrary field values and performing tadpole resummations, we argue that the conjecture must be applied only at extrema of the scalar potential (when expressed in locally canonical coordinates). We consider several toy models in the context of no-scale supergravity and also consider examples of inflationary models.

United States

Tony Gherghetta

Keith Olive

Sarunas Verner

Testing the scalar weak gravity conjecture in no-scale supergravity

We construct new string vacua featuring Brane Supersymmetry Breaking, based on T 4/ℤ N  orientifolds with O5+ planes and   <math> <mover> <mrow> <mi>D</mi> <mn>5</mn> </mrow> <mo>¯</mo> </mover> </math>  $$ \overline{\textrm{D}5} $$  branes. Differently from the original construction, in these vacua the cancellation of twisted R-R charges of D-branes and orientifold planes is achieved in a non-trivial way, and results in rigid configurations with few open-string moduli, which highly restrict the possible deformations of the model. The breaking of supersymmetry and, consequently, the non-vanishing untwisted and twisted NS-NS tadpoles, generates a rich potential both for the dilaton and the blown-up moduli.

Carlo Angelantonj

Romania

Cezar Condeescu

Giorgio Leone

Rigid vacua with Brane Supersymmetry Breaking

Supergravity theories with nonminimal Kähler potentials are characterized by a nontrivial field space manifold with corresponding nontrivial kinetic terms. The scattering amplitudes in these theories can be calculated at fixed background field values by making a field redefinition to Riemann normal coordinates. Because of the Kähler structure of supergravity, a more compact method for calculating amplitudes is obtained by a redefinition to Kähler normal coordinates. We compare both methods and calculate the explicit transformations and amplitudes for several examples in the context of no-scale supergravity with one and two chiral superfields. We show that in all cases the equivalence of the scattering amplitudes using either Riemann normal or Kähler normal coordinates is possible only at extremal points of the scalar potential.

Keith A. Olive

Supergravity scattering amplitudes

We compute the supersymmetry-breaking three-form fluxes generated by the addition of anti-D3 branes at the tip of a Klebanov-Strassler throat. These fluxes give rise to nontrivial terms in the superpotential when the throat is embedded in a flux compactification. We describe these terms both from a ten-dimensional and from a four-dimensional perspective and show that, upon including Kähler-moduli stabilization, the resulting potential admits de Sitter minima. Our proposed de Sitter construction does not require additional supersymmetry-breaking (0,3) fluxes, and hence is more minimalist than the KKLT proposal.

Iosif Bena

CERN

Mariana Graña

Gabriele Lo Monaco

Dimitrios Toulikas

Bare-bones de Sitter vacua

It is well-known that gravitino propagation in standard supergravities is free of any causality problems. However, two issues related to gravitino propagation were recently uncovered in specific supergravities with nonlinear supersymmetry. One of them concerns potential acausality/superluminality, whereas the second one arises from the vanishing of the sound speed at specific points during inflation. The former is famously related to positivity constraints on specific EFT operators, derived from dispersion relations on the energy-growing part of scattering amplitudes, and indeed we show that subluminality constraints for the gravitino are related via the equivalence theorem to positivity bounds in low-energy goldstino actions. However, the former are stronger, in the sense that they apply to functions of the scalar fields not only in the ground state, but for any field values such as those scanned by time-dependent solutions, unlike bounds derived from 2 → 2 scattering amplitudes in the vacuum. We also argue that nontrivial causality constraints arise only in the case where nonlinear supersymmetry in the matter sector is encoded into superfield constraints which do not seem to arise from microscopic two-derivative lagrangians, in particular for the orthogonal constraint used to build minimal models of inflation in supergravity. This allows us to propose simple alternatives which maintain the minimality of the spectra and are causal in all points of the theory parameter space. We also discuss minimal supergravity models of inflation along these lines.

Quentin Bonnefoy

Causality constraints on nonlinear supersymmetry

Starting from a peculiar orientifold projection proposed long ago by Angelantonj and Cardella, we elaborate on a novel perturbative scenario that involves only D-branes, together with the two types of orientifold planes O ±  and anti-orientifold planes   <math> <msub> <mover> <mi>O</mi> <mo>¯</mo> </mover> <mo>±</mo> </msub> </math>  $$ {\overline{\mathrm{O}}}_{\pm } $$ . We elucidate the microscopic ingredients of such models, connecting them to a novel realization of brane supersymmetry breaking. Depending on the position of the D-branes in the internal space, supersymmetry can be broken at the string scale on branes, or alternatively only at the massive level. The main novelty of this construction is that it features no NS-NS disk tadpoles, while avoiding open-string instabilities. The one-loop potential, which depends on the positions of the D-branes, is minimized for maximally broken, non-linearly realized supersymmetry. The orientifold projection and the effective field theory description reveal a soft breaking of supersymmetry in the closed-string sector. In such models it is possible to decouple the gravitino mass from the value of the scalar potential, while avoiding brane instabilities.

Thibaut Coudarchet

Hervé Partouche

Geometry of orientifold vacua and supersymmetry breaking