A new N=1 AdS4 Vacuum of Maximal Supergravity

Abstract

The recent comprehensive numerical study of critical points of the scalar potential of four-dimensional N=8, SO(8) gauged supergravity using Machine Learning software has led to a discovery of a new N=1 vacuum with a triality-invariant SO(3) symmetry. Guided by the numerical data for that point, we obtain a consistent SO(3)xZ2-invariant truncation of the N=8 theory to an N=1 supergravity with three chiral multiplets. Critical points of the truncated scalar potential include both the N=1 point as well as two new non-supersymmetric and perturbatively unstable points not found by previous searches. Studying the structure of the submanifold of SO(3)xZ2-invariant supergravity scalars, we find that it has a simple interpretation as a submanifold of the 14-dimensional Z2^3-invariant scalar manifold (SU(1,1)/U(1))^7, for which we find a rather remarkable superpotential whose structure matches the single bit error correcting (7, 4) Hamming code. This 14-dimensional scalar manifold contains approximately one quarter of the known critical points. We also show that there exists a smooth supersymmetric domain wall which interpolates between the new N=1 AdS4 solution and the maximally supersymmetric AdS4 vacuum. Using holography, this result indicates the existence of an N=1 RG flow from the ABJM SCFT to a new strongly interacting conformal fixed point in the IR.