Symmetries, Protected Quantities, and Exact Computations in Supergravity

June 29 - July 3

Recent years have witnessed a surge of exact computations of supersymmetry-protected observables in supergravity. These results anchor some of the sharpest quantitative tests of the AdS/CFT correspondence to date. While examples are increasingly plentiful, their deeper formal underpinnings remain elusive. Several diverse perspectives and approaches shed partial light, but their relations to one another remain unclear. The core structures must lie at the intersection of these various mutually illuminating strands.

The universal superfield formulations of supersymmetry supplied by the pure spinor superfield formalism have quietly lifted a longstanding technical obstacle to performing calculations in the spirit of supersymmetric localization. In doing so, they recast supergravity as a theory of deformations of a non-holonomic distribution in derived geometry, with gauge symmetries governed by infinite-dimensional Lie superalgebras that arise as tangent complexes to their moduli. This approach offers a new ringed-space perspective on issues that are traditionally treated using ideas from Cartan geometry to build superspace techniques. In parallel, the twisted supergravity program reframes the same protected quantities inside holomorphic-topological sectors, offering a complementary perspective that streamlines localization-based computations while clarifying their geometric provenance. Dualities can be made rigorous within twisted supergravity, but appear most naturally within approaches using generalized or exceptional geometry, which have undergone rapid development recently, uncovering striking structural similarities to BCOV theory while tying supergravity to the deformation theory of exceptional or generalized geometric structures. Taken together, these viewpoints outline a coherent narrative that bridges geometry, homotopical algebra, and supergravity.

A central goal of the workshop is to create a common language among these diverse approaches and the communities that work on them, encouraging participants to share perspectives and identify deep structural similarities. By bringing together complementary viewpoints, the workshop aims to initiate collaborations across areas that are often pursued in parallel but rarely in conversation. In addition to overviews and perspectives by experts in each approach, the format will include focused talks, ample discussion time, and opportunities for informal interaction.

Dates:
The COST event will run from Monday June 29 – Thursday July 2. Lectures and discussion will continue at the Johannishof for an extra day on Friday July 3.

To facilitate the informal interactions, we encourage arrival on Sunday, 28th of June and departure on Saturday, 4th of July. We have arranged the venue accordingly; meals at the Johannishof will begin with dinner on Sunday and end with breakfast on Saturday.

Organisers:

Ingmar Saberi (University of Hertfordshire)
Surya Raghavendran (Yale University)
Julian Kupka (University of Hertfordshire)

Venue:
Johannishof, Nesselwang (in the countryside around München), Germany
https://johannishof-nesselwang.de/

Invited participants will receive financial support from COST in the form of a per diem, which should cover the cost of participation. Full board and accommodation in shared rooms will be provided at the conference venue. We expect a convivial atmosphere in rustic surroundings, with plenty of time for relaxed discussion. For participants who prefer, there is the option of independently arranging a private room in nearby Nesselwang, where trains to Munich also run.

Directions:
We strongly encourage all participants to seek out more sustainable travel options following the COST guidelines. In case you are funded by COST, these guidelines become mandatory. For places that can be reached within around 8 hours by train or bus, ground travel should be chosen. For those for whom air travel is unavoidable, we kindly ask you to include carbon offsetting during the booking process.

Regional trains run regularly between Nesselwang train station and Kempten im Allgäu, where connections from Munich, Augsburg, and further European destinations are available.

The most convenient airport options are Munich or Memmingen (for discount airlines). In each case, onward train connections to Nesselwang are available:

From Munich, we recommend the Bayern-Ticket, which is valid for all regional trains in Bavaria for an entire day, and which will cover all of your transport directly from the airport all the way to Nesselwang. The ticket is also available for groups of up to five people at a substantial discount per head, and there are special allowances for children; please consult the details on the Deutsche Bahn website. (Important: The Bayern-Ticket is not valid on express trains, which have ICE or ECE.) You will need to take the S-Bahn to central Munich, and then travel onward to Nesselwang via Kempten.

From Memmingen, buses run regularly between the airport and the train station. From there, a standard single ticket to Nesselwang (with a change in Kempten) is the cheapest option.

The conference venue is about 20 minutes/1.3 km by foot from Nesselwang train station. For those with children or bulky luggage, we have arranged for the possibility of pickup by car from the station upon request. For that, please let us know well in advance that you'd like to be picked up, and keep us apprised of the time you plan on arriving at the station.

Schedule:

The schedule is designed to leave ample opportunity for group discussion, informal interaction, and exchange. A tentative version is below and will be updated as the event approaches.

The conference is designed to bring together the perspectives of various communities working on areas connected to supergravity and its geometric foundations. These areas include localization and precision holography, generalized and exceptional geometry, (higher) Cartan geometry, twisted holography, Tanaka structures, and pure spinor techniques. In keeping with this structure, we will have four "perspective" talks (two 45-minute lectures with 15 minutes of questions and discussion), representing the first four of these areas. These talks will be rounded out by "research" talks (45 minutes plus 15 minutes of questions and discussion), featuring recent progress from across the spectrum. We hope to devote a generous amount of time to discussion in the larger group.

Here is a list of speakers and titles:

Overview 1: Sameer Murthy. Talk 1: "Gravitational index"; Talk 2: "Exact computations and twisted supergravity"

Overview 2: Fridrich Valach, "Generalized geometry in supergravity"

Overview 3: Jan Slovak, "Cartan geometries, invariant calculi, and Lie theory"

Overview 4: Urs Schreiber, "Supergravity via superspace Bianchis"

Research 1: Chris Couzens, "Equivariant localization in supergravity"

Research 2: Eirik Svanes, "On progress in heterotic moduli and associated topological field theories"

Research 3: Andrew Beckett, "Supersymmetric backgrounds, Spencer cohomology, and filtered subdeformations"

Research 4: Grigorios Giotopoulos, "Flux quantization on 10d type IIA superspace via cyclification from 11d"

Research 5: Martin Cederwall, "Superspace formulation of d=10, N=1 supergravity"

Research 6: Fabian Hahner, "Branes in twisted eleven-dimensional supergravity"

Research 7: Jan Pulmann, "Geometric Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism"

Research 8: Alex Arvanitakis, "Towards generalized topological string theory"

Urs and Grigorios have kindly made lecture notes for their series of talks: https://ncatlab.org/schreiber/show/Nesselwang+2026

Registration:
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