Magnetic charges in the AdS(4) superalgebra osp(4|2)

Abstract

We discuss the issue of how to include magnetic charges in the AdS(4) superalgebra osp(4|2). It is shown that the usual way of introducing a pseudoscalar central charge on the right hand side of the basic anticommutator does not work, because this breaks SO(2,3) covariance. We propose a way out by promoting the magnetic charge to a vector charge, which amounts to enlarge osp(4|2) to the superconformal algebra su(2,2|1). The conditions for 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 BPS states are then analyzed. These states form the boundary of the convex cone associated with the Jordan algebra of 4x4 complex hermitian matrices. An Inonu-Wigner contraction of the constructed superalgebra yields a known extension of the Poincare' superalgebra containing electric and magnetic 0-brane charges as well as string- and space-filling 3-brane charges. As an example, we show how some supersymmetric AdS(4) black holes fit into the classification scheme of BPS states.