The superconformal formulation of four-dimensional supergravity yields a coupling flow operator that is regular at zero gravitational coupling, clearing two of three obstacles to a Nicolai map.
Perturbative Nicolai-Map Diagrammatics: Application to Poincar\'{e} Supergravity
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abstract
We develop a perturbative, diagrammatic framework for constructing Nicolai maps and apply it to four-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=1$ Poincar\'e supergravity expanded around flat Minkowski space. It provides an alternative to the coupling-flow-operator construction, which faces several obstructions when extended to local supersymmetry. Expanding the bosonic effective action and the Nicolai map jointly in the gravitational coupling $\kappa$ and the loop-counting parameter $\hbar$, we derive the Nicolai-map defining conditions, i.e. the free-action and determinant-matching conditions, order by order. The diagrammatics enumerates all admissible local terms in the Nicolai-map ansatz from the effective-action diagrams and reduces the construction to a finite system of nonlinear polynomial equations. Carried through order $\kappa^{2}$, the resulting constraints are found to be independent of the detailed bosonic input and hierarchical, order-$\kappa^{2}$ consistency further restricting the order-$\kappa$ data. A consistent Nicolai-map construction for the Einstein--Hilbert graviton sector is found to require the Rarita--Schwinger gravitino already at this order: Einstein gravity admits a Nicolai map only through its $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetric completion, Poincar\'e supergravity, supporting Nicolai's characterization of supersymmetry.
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The coupling flow for supergravity
The superconformal formulation of four-dimensional supergravity yields a coupling flow operator that is regular at zero gravitational coupling, clearing two of three obstacles to a Nicolai map.