Differential Geometry Through Supersymmetric Glasses

Back in 1982, Edward Witten noticed that classical problems of differential geometry and differential topology such as the de Rham complex and Morse theory can be described in a very simple and transparent way using the language of supersymmetric quantum mechanics. Since then, many research papers have been written on this subject. Unfortunately not all the results in this field known to mathematicians have obtained a transparent physical interpretation, even if this new physical technique has also allowed many mathematical results to be derived which are completely new, in particular, hyper-Kaehler and the so-called HKT geometry. But in almost 40 years, no comprehensive monograph has appeared on this subject. So this book written by an expert in supersymmetric quantum field theories, supersymmetric quantum mechanics and its geometrical applications, addresses this yearning gap.It comprises three parts: The first, GEOMETRY, gives basic information on the geometry of real, complex, hyper-Kaehler and HKT manifolds, and is principally addressed to the physicist. The second part 'PHYSICS' presents information on classical mechanics with ordinary and Grassmann dynamics variables. Besides, the author introduces supersymmetry and dwells in particular on the representation of supersymmetry algebra in superspace. And the last and most important part of the book 'SYNTHESIS', is where the ideas borrowed from physics are used to study purely mathematical phenomena.

"Back in 1982, Edward Witten noticed that classical problems of differential geometry and differential topology such as the de Rham complex and Morse theory can be described in a very simple and transparent way using the language of supersymmetric quantum mechanics. Since then, many research papers have been written on this subject. Unfortunately not all the results in this field known to mathematicians have obtained a transparent physical interpretation, even if this new physical technique has also allowed many mathematical results to be derived which are completely new, in particular, hyper-Kaehler and the so-called HKT geometry. But in almost 40 years, no comprehensive monograph has appeared on this subject. So this book written by an expert in supersymmetric quantum field theories, supersymmetric quantum mechanics and its geometrical applications, addresses this yearning gap. It comprises three parts: The first, GEOMETRY, gives basic information on the geometry of real, complex, hyper-Kaehler and HKT manifolds, and is principally addressed to the physicist. The second part "PHYSICS" presents information on classical mechanics with ordinary and Grassmann dynamics variables. Besides, the author introduces supersymmetry and dwells in particular on the representation of supersymmetry algebra in superspace. And the last and most important part of the book "SYNTHESIS", is where the ideas borrowed from physics are used to study purely mathematical phenomena"--

All papers have been peer-reviewed. This volume includes the contributions to the International Workshop on Geometry and Physics: Special Metrics and Supersymmetry, held at the University of the Basque Country, Bilbao (Spain), from May 29 to 31, 2008. The topics covered by the volume deal with leading aspects of algebraic and differential geometry with special emphasis to their potential applications in supersymmetry and string theories. The areas covered by the proceedings are algebraic geometry, differential geometry and mathematical physics. In greater detail, they cover outstanding topics such as homological mirror symmetry, generalized Hodge theory, coassociative submanifolds, special geometric structures, geometric structures, Killing spinors, torsion geometry, string theory, supersymmetry and T-duality, among others.

This book aims to provide an overview of several topics in advanced differential geometry and Lie group theory, all of them stemming from mathematical problems in supersymmetric physical theories. It presents a mathematical illustration of the main development in geometry and symmetry theory that occurred under the fertilizing influence of supersymmetry/supergravity. The contents are mainly of mathematical nature, but each topic is introduced by historical information and enriched with motivations from high energy physics, which help the reader in getting a deeper comprehension of the subject.

In this work the question whether noncommutative geometry allows for supersymmetric theories is addressed. Noncommutative geometry has seen remarkable applications in high energy physics, viz. the geometrical interpretation of the Standard Model, however such a question has not been answered in a conclusive way so far.The book starts with a systematic analysis of the possibilities for so-called almost-commutative geometries on a 4-dimensional, flat background to exhibit not only a particle content that is eligible for supersymmetry, but also have a supersymmetric action. An approach is proposed in which the basic `building blocks' of potentially supersymmetric theories and the demands for their action to be supersymmetric are identified. It is then described how a novel kind of soft supersymmetry breaking Lagrangian arises naturally from the spectral action. Finally, the above formalism is applied to explore the existence of a noncommutative version of the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model.This book is intended for mathematical/theoretical physicists with an interest in the applications of noncommutative geometry to supersymmetric field theories.

This book treats the two-dimensional non-linear supersymmetric sigma model or spinning string from the perspective of supergeometry. The objective is to understand its symmetries as geometric properties of super Riemann surfaces, which are particular complex super manifolds of dimension 1|1. The first part gives an introduction to the super differential geometry of families of super manifolds. Appropriate generalizations of principal bundles, smooth families of complex manifolds and integration theory are developed. The second part studies uniformization, U(1)-structures and connections on Super Riemann surfaces and shows how the latter can be viewed as extensions of Riemann surfaces by a gravitino field. A natural geometric action functional on super Riemann surfaces is shown to reproduce the action functional of the non-linear supersymmetric sigma model using a component field formalism. The conserved currents of this action can be identified as infinitesimal deformations of the super Riemann surface. This is in surprising analogy to the theory of Riemann surfaces and the harmonic action functional on them. This volume is aimed at both theoretical physicists interested in a careful treatment of the subject and mathematicians who want to become acquainted with the potential applications of this beautiful theory.

The book is devoted to vacuum structure of supersymmetric quantum mechanical and field theories. The Witten Index (the title of book) is a powerful theoretical tool, which allows one to find out whether supersymmetry breaks down spontaneously in a given theory or not. This is the main physical interest of this notion, but the latter has also many beautiful purely mathematical connotations. It represents a variant of the so-called equivariant index introduced by Cartan back in 1950 and is closely related to the Atiyah-Singer index.In his previous book 'Differential Geometry through Supersymmetric Glasses', World Scientific, 2020, the author showed how the supersymmetric language allows one to describe, in a rather transparent way, some known facts of differential geometry and also derive new results in this field.This book is mostly addressed to experts in quantum field theory, but the first three chapters has an introductory textbook nature and can be read by a non-expert. In Chapters 4 and 5, the general aspects of the Witten index are explained and the relationship with pure mathematical problems is elucidated. Chapters 6, 7, 8 are devoted to four-dimensional supersymmetric gauge theories: pure supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories in Chapter 6, the theories including a nonchiral (Chapter 7) and chiral (Chapter 8) matter. Chapter 9 is devoted to the so-called maximal supersymmetric quantum mechanics obtained by a dimensional reduction of the 10-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. In Chapter 10, the numbers of supersymmetric vacua in 3-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills-Chern-Simons theories is calculated. Finally, in Chapter 11, the author discusses some relatives of the Witten index, such as the indices for the 4-dimensional theories compactified on S3 x R, rather than 4-torus or the so-called Cecolli-Fendley-Intriligator-Vafa index.

The geometrical methods in modem mathematical physics and the developments in Geometry and Global Analysis motivated by physical problems are being intensively worked out in contemporary mathematics. In particular, during the last decades a new branch of Global Analysis, Stochastic Differential Geometry, was formed to meet the needs of Mathematical Physics. It deals with a lot of various second order differential equations on finite and infinite-dimensional manifolds arising in Physics, and its validity is based on the deep inter-relation between modem Differential Geometry and certain parts of the Theory of Stochastic Processes, discovered not so long ago. The foundation of our topic is presented in the contemporary mathematical literature by a lot of publications devoted to certain parts of the above-mentioned themes and connected with the scope of material of this book. There exist some monographs on Stochastic Differential Equations on Manifolds (e. g. [9,36,38,87]) based on the Stratonovich approach. In [7] there is a detailed description of It6 equations on manifolds in Belopolskaya-Dalecky form. Nelson's book [94] deals with Stochastic Mechanics and mean derivatives on Riemannian Manifolds. The books and survey papers on the Lagrange approach to Hydrodynamics [2,31,73,88], etc. , give good presentations of the use of infinite-dimensional ordinary differential geometry in ideal hydrodynamics. We should also refer here to [89,102], to the previous books by the author [53,64], and to many others.