Minimal massive supergravity and new theories of massive gravity

Abstract

We present an action for minimal massive gravity (MMG) in three dimensions in terms of a dreibein and an independent spin connection. Furthermore, the construction provides an action principle for an infinite family of so-called third-way consistent generalizations of the three-dimensional Einstein field equations, including exotic massive gravity and new higher-order generalizations. It allows us to systematically construct the matter couplings for these models, including the couplings to fermions, depending on the spin connection. In particular, we construct different supersymmetric extensions of MMG, and derive their second order fermionic field equations. This establishes a new class of three-dimensional supergravity theories and we discuss their limit to topological massive supergravity. Finally, we identify the landscape of (anti–)de Sitter vacua of the supersymmetric models. We analyze the spectrum and the unitarity properties of these vacua. We recover the known AdS vacua of MMG which are bulk and boundary unitary. Published by the American Physical Society 2024