Abstract:

Non-linear supergravity has been understood for decades as a supersymmetric extension of Einstein-Hilbert gravity. Two crucial steps in extending the Einstein-Hilbert action to a supersymmetric action are 1) extending the frame field to a superframe field and 2) extending bosonic spacetime to superspace. It is currently unknown how to do each of these steps in Thomas-Whitehead gravity, though recent work by Rodgers et. al. has been completed to extend Thomas-Whitehead gravity to a graded space that is not supersymmetric (the full algebra of supersymmetry is not satisfied). An alternative procedure apart from working in superspace that would shed light on how to fully supersymmetrize a system is to 1) reduce the bosonic system to one dimension 2) construct what is known as an adinkra picture that describes a supersymmetrization of the system and 3) dimensionally extend back to higher dimensions. This talk describes this alternative procedure for constructing known supergravity systems and introduces how it might be completed in the case of Thomas-Whitehead gravity.

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