Supergravity à la Fin de Siècle - Prof Neil Lambert (Lecture 1) 

Part of LonTI lectures Autumn 2023.
Title: Supergravity à la Fin de Siècle
Lecturer: Prof Neil Lambert (King's College London)
Date: 9 October 2023
Place: LIMS @ the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
Description: In these lectures we will provide a basic introduction to Supergravity as it arises in String Theory and M-Theory. We will start by introducing vielbeins and spin connections in order to construct supergravity actions. In the second lecture we will briefly introduce the maximal supergravity theories in ten and eleven-dimensions. We will briefly discuss special holonomy manifolds, explicitly construct BPS p-brane solutions and prove their non-perturbative stability. Time permitting we will discuss toroidal compactifications and U-duality.
I will assume basic MSc level material (Riemannian geometry, fermions and rigid supersymmetry). The lecture notes that will be provided are largely self-contained but the textbook “Supergravity” by Freedman and van Proeyen contains more details.
See lonti.weebly.c... for references and recommended literature.