Spinor algebras (Q5955632)

The authors consider supersymmetry algebras in space-times with arbitrary signature and minimal number of spinor generators. They start with properties of spinors and Clifford algebras for arbitrary signature and dimension, and describe the symmetry properties of the Spin\((V)\)-morphisms. Then the Poincaré and conformal supersymmetry are studied in a uniform way. The next topics in the paper are the orthosymplectic algebras and their contractions to centrally extended super Poincaré and super translation algebras. A description of real forms of the classical Lie algebras is given by the use of orthogonal, symplectic and linear spinors. The main result in the paper is the classification of the minimal Spin\((V)\) and maximal Spin\((V)\) superalgebras. The authors show that the minimal super conformal algebras are supersymmetric extensions of the Spin\((V)\)-algebra and a maximal superalgebra is always an orthosymplectic algebra. Finally they classify the superalgebras containing space-time supersymmetry for a physical space-time of signature \((D-1,1)\), \(D=3,\dots,12\).