Towards loop quantum supergravity (LQSG): I. Rarita–Schwinger sector

In our companion papers, we managed to derive a connection formulation of Lorentzian general relativity in D + 1 dimensions with compact gauge group SO(D + 1) such that the connection is Poisson-commuting, which implies that loop quantum gravity quantization methods apply. We also provided the coupling to standard matter. In this paper, we extend our methods to derive a connection formulation of a large class of Lorentzian signature supergravity theories, in particular 11 D SUGRA and 4 D, N = 8 SUGRA, which was in fact the motivation to consider higher dimensions. Starting from a Hamiltonian formulation in the time gauge which yields a Spin(D) theory, a major challenge is to extend the internal gauge group to Spin(D + 1) in the presence of the Rarita–Schwinger field. This is non-trivial because SUSY typically requires the Rarita–Schwinger field to be a Majorana fermion for the Lorentzian Clifford algebra and Majorana representations of the Clifford algebra are not available in the same spacetime dimension for both Lorentzian and Euclidean signatures. We resolve the arising tension and provide a background-independent representation of the non-trivial Dirac antibracket *-algebra for the Majorana field which significantly differs from the analogous construction for Dirac fields already available in the literature. (paper)