Properties of the new N = 1 AdS4 vacuum of maximal supergravity

A bstract The recent comprehensive numerical study of critical points of the scalar potential of four-dimensional N N = 8, SO(8) gauged supergravity using Machine Learning software in [1] has led to a discovery of a new N N = 1 vacuum with a triality-invariant SO(3) symmetry. Guided by the numerical data for that point, we obtain a consistent SO(3) × ℤ 2 -invariant truncation of the N N = 8 theory to an N N = 1 supergravity with three chiral multiplets. Critical points of the truncated scalar potential include both the N N = 1 point as well as two new non-supersymmetric and perturbatively unstable points not found by previous searches. Studying the structure of the submanifold of SO(3) × ℤ 2 -invariant supergravity scalars, we find that it has a simple interpretation as a submanifold of the 14-dimensional Z₂³ ℤ 2 3 -invariant scalar manifold (SU(1 , 1) / U(1)) 7 , for which we find a rather remarkable superpotential whose structure matches the single bit error correcting (7 , 4) Hamming code. This 14-dimensional scalar manifold contains approximately one quarter of the known critical points. We also show that there exists a smooth supersymmetric domain wall which interpolates between the new N N = 1 AdS 4 solution and the maximally supersymmetric AdS 4 vacuum. Using holography, this result indicates the existence of an N N = 1 RG flow from the ABJM SCFT to a new strongly interacting conformal fixed point in the IR.