Date of Award:

8-2020

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Physics

Committee Chair(s)

Oscar Varela

Committee

Oscar Varela

Committee

Mark Fels

Committee

Praxitels Ntokos

Abstract

Development of a unified theory of physics would pave the way for new research and technology development for many years to come. Unfortunately, the two best current theories explaining nature, the Standard Model of particle physics and general relativity, do not seem to be compatible, requiring the development of more complicated models which contains both of these at their respective limits. Supergravities are one set of theories which may, at least in part, provide hints as to how it may be possible to unify physics into a single model.

This research project follows from a line of investigation which the primary investigator and collaborators have been pursuing for the past several years exploring the properties of supergravity. The main goal of this project was attempting to confirm whether or not the mass spectra of gravitons are common among different theories of supergravity, and if not to find any properties which are universal, in order to improve understanding of super-gravities as a whole. Our research group examined 8 sectors of symmetry within 3 different supergravity theories and found that these mass spectra are not universal, but that there do exist relations which are. We then found a way to write all the mass spectra we investigated and these relations we found in a universal way using the language of general relativity.

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