Seminario del Departamento de Física Teórica: “Re-examining the Foundations of Supergravity: The Spin-1/2 Sector”.- Jueves 18 de septiembre
El jueves 18 de septiembre de 2025 a las 12:05 h se impartirá el seminario organizado por el Departamento de Física Teórica de título "Re-examining the Foundations of Supergravity: The Spin-1/2 Sector" por Mauricio Valenzuela Uribe (Centro de Estudios Científicos (CECs), Universidad San Sebastián, Valdivia, Chile). Tendrá lugar en el Seminario de Física Teórica (planta primera del Edificio A, Físicas).
Resumen (en inglés):
This talk explores the overlooked spin-1/2 sector of basic supergravity, challenging the long-standing view -present since the origins of supergravity in the late 1970s- that it is non-physical.
We show that this belief arose from assuming the validity of the Dirac conjecture of the theory of constrained Hamiltonian systems. We demonstrate that the conjecture does not hold in this particular case, and that additional off-shell analyses allow us to conclude that the spin-1/2 sector actually propagates. This result explains why unconventional supersymmetry (USUSY) models by Alvarez, Valenzuela, and Zanelli make phenomenological sense. Finally, we discuss the implications for supergravity phenomenology and outline open questions and future research directions in this area.
