N = 4 SYM, (super)-polynomial rings and emergent quantum mechanical symmetries

Abstract

The structure of half-BPS representations of psu(2, 2|4) leads to the definition of a super-polynomial ring R(8|8) which admits a realisation of psu(2, 2|4) in terms of differential operators on the super-ring. The character of the half-BPS fundamental field representation encodes the resolution of the representation in terms of an exact sequence of modules of R(8|8). The half-BPS representation is realized by quotienting the superring by a quadratic ideal, equivalently by setting to zero certain quadratic polynomials in the generators of the super-ring. This description of the half-BPS fundamental field irreducible representation of psu(2, 2|4) in terms of a super-polynomial ring is an example of a more general construction of lowest-weight representations of Lie (super-) algebras using polynomial rings generated by a commuting subspace of the standard raising operators, corresponding to positive roots of the Lie (super-) algebra. We illustrate the construction using simple examples of representations of su(3) and su(4). These results lead to the definition of a notion of quantum mechanical emergence for oscillator realisations of symmetries, which is based on ideals in the ring of polynomials in the creation operators.