SuSy backgrounds and M-theory corrections

It would be remiss of me not to point out the Vega Science Trust which has been recently highlighted on cosmicvariance by Mark Trodden; if nothing else go and watch the Feynman lectures available there. Elsewhere Seed magazine seems to be getting much blog support (see here, here and here). So jumping on the bandwagon I'd like to recommend the Seed magazine podcast so you can have "science is culture" articles wherever you take your mp3 player. In fact if you are keen on podcasts you should also listen to Berkley Groks.

This week Kellogg Stelle from Imperial College visited KCL to tell us about his work on corrections to M-theory at order {\alpha'}^3. In particular he described work which demonstrated how supersymmetry may be preserved by making use of a corrected killing spinor equation. Indeed one may work backwards and start with a corrected killing spinor equation and rediscover the corrections to the string background. The methods used for various supersymmetric backgrounds are based on the following papers written variously with Lu, Pope and Townsend:

Higher-Order Corrections to Non-Compact Calabi-Yau Manifolds in String Theory (Kahler manifolds)

Supersymmetric Deformations of G_2 Manifolds from Higher-Order Corrections to String and M-Theory (G_2 manifolds)

String and M-theory Deformations of Manifolds with Special Holonomy (Spin_7)

Generalised Holonomy for Higher-Order Corrections to Supersymmetric Backgrounds in String and M-Theory (Generalised holonomy)

If you want to learn more read through the first paper above, there are some surprising results. You might even be keen on thinking about the alpha' corrections and the group E10, or even their effect on entropy calculations. I'd write more but 'tis the season to be making postdoc applications and I really have to be seasonal, very quickly and as many times as possible. Ug, the drudgery.