Considerations on Super Poincare Algebras and their Extensions to Simple Superalgebras

Abstract

We consider simple superalgebras which are a supersymmetric extension of $\fspin(s,t)$ in the cases where the number of odd generators does not exceed 64. All of them contain a super Poincar\'e algebra as a contraction and another as a subalgebra. Because of the contraction property, some of these algebras can be interpreted as de Sitter or anti de Sitter superalgebras. However, the number of odd generators present in the contraction is not always minimal due to the different splitting properties of the spinor representations under a subalgebra. We consider the general case, with arbitrary dimension and signature, and examine in detail particular examples with physical implications in dimensions $d=10$ and $d=4$.