Bosonic construction of the Lie algebras of some non-compact groups appearing in supergravity theories and their oscillator-like unitary representations

We give a construction of the Lie algebras of the non-compact groups appearing in four dimensional supergravity theories in terms of boson operators. Our construction parallels very closely their emergence in supergravity and is an extension of the well-known construction of the Lie algebras of the non-compact groups SP (2n, R) and SO(2n)sup(*) from boson operators transforming like a fundamental representation of their maximal compact subgroup U(n). However this extension is non-trivial only for n >= 4 and stops at n = 8 leading to the Lie algebras of SU(4) x SU(1, 1), SU(5, 1), SO(12)sup(*) and Esub((7)). We then give a general construction of an infinite class of unitary irreducible representations of the respective non-compact groups (except for Esub((7)) and SO(12)sup(*) obtained from the extended construction). We illustrate our construction with the examples of SU(5, 1) and SO(12)sup(*). (orig.)