Killing Vector Fields and Superharmonic Field Theories

Abstract

The harmonic action functional allows a natural generalisation to semi-Riemannian supergeometry, referred to as superharmonic action, which resembles the supersymmetric sigma models studied in high energy physics. We show that Killing vector fields are infinitesimal supersymmetries of the superharmonic action and prove three different Noether theorems in this context. En passant, we provide a homogeneous treatment of five characterisations of Killing vector fields on semi-Riemannian supermanifolds, thus filling a gap in the literature.