In recent years, a close connection between supergravity, string effective actions and generalized geometry has been discovered that typically involves a doubling of geometric structures. We investigate this relation from the point of view of graded geometry, introducing an approach based on deformations of graded Poisson structures and derive the corresponding gravity actions. We consider in particular natural deformations of the 2-graded symplectic manifold T * [2]T [1]M that are based on a metric g, a closed Neveu-Schwarz 3-form H (locally expressed in terms of a Kalb-Ramond 2-form B) and a scalar dilaton φ. The derived bracket formalism relates this structure to the generalized differential geometry of a Courant algebroid, which has the appropriate stringy symmetries, and yields a connection with non-trivial curvature and torsion on the generalized "doubled" tangent bundle E ∼ = T M ⊕ T * M . Projecting onto T M with the help of a natural non-isotropic splitting of E, we obtain a connection and curvature invariants that reproduce the NS-NS sector of supergravity in 10 dimensions. Further results include a fully generalized Dorfman bracket, a generalized Lie bracket and new formulas for torsion and curvature tensors associated to generalized tangent bundles. A byproduct is a unique Koszul-type formula for the torsionful connection naturally associated to a non-symmetric metric, which resolves ambiguity problems and inconsistencies of traditional approaches to non-symmetric gravity theories.

We propose an analogue of spin fields for the relativistic RNS-particle in 4 dimensions, in order to describe Ramond-Ramond states as “two-particle” excitations on the world line. On a natural representation space we identify a differential whose cohomology agrees with RR-fields equations. We then discuss the non-linear theory encoded in deformations of the latter by background fields. We also formulate a sigma model for this spin field from which we recover the RNS-formulation by imposing suitable constraints.

We suggest a new action for a "dual" gravity in a stringy R, Q flux background. The construction is based on degree-2 graded symplectic geometry with a homological vector field. The structure we consider is non-canonical and features a curvature-free connection. It is known that the data of Poisson structures of degree 2 with a Hamiltonian correspond to a Courant algebroid on T M ⊕ T * M, the bundle of generalized geometry. With the bracket for the Courant algebroid and a further bracket which resembles the Lie bracket of vector fields, we get a connection with nonzero curvature for the bundle of generalized geometry. The action is the (almost) Hilbert-Einstein action for that connection.

We study a deformation of a 2-graded Poisson algebra where the functions of the phase space variables are complemented by linear functions of parity odd velocities. The deformation is carried by a 2-form B-field and a bivector Π, that we consider as gauge fields of the geometric and non-geometric fluxes H, f, Q and R arising in the context of string theory compactification. The technique used to deform the Poisson brackets is widely known for the point particle interacting with a U(1) gauge field, but not in the case of non-abelian or higher spin fields. The construction is closely related to Generalized Geometry: with an element of the algebra that squares to zero, the graded symplectic picture is equivalent to an exact Courant algebroid over the generalized tangent bundle E ≅ TM ⊕ T∗M, and to its higher gauge theory. A particular idempotent graded canonical transformation is equivalent to the generalized metric. Focusing on the generalized differential geometry side we construct an action functional with the Ricci tensor of a connection on covectors, encoding the dynamics of a gravitational theory for a contravariant metric tensor and Q and R fluxes. We also extract a connection on vector fields and determine a non-symmetric metric gravity theory involving a metric and H-flux.