(M-theory-)Killing spinors on symmetric spaces

We show how the theory of invariant principal bundle connections for reductive homogeneous spaces can be applied to determine the holonomy of generalised Killing spinor covariant derivatives of the form D = ∇ + Ω in a purely algebraic and algorithmic way, where Ω : TM → Λ∗(TM) is a left-invariant homomorphism. Specialising this to the case of symmetric M-theory backgrounds (i.e., (M, g, F) with (M, g) an eleven-dimensional Lorentzian (locally) symmetric space and F an invariant closed 4-form), we derive several criteria for such a background to preserve some supersymmetry and consequently find all supersymmetric symmetric M-theory backgrounds.