GEOMETRIC ALGEBRA AND M-THEORY COMPACTIFICATIONS

We show how supersymmetry conditions for flux compactifications of supergravity and string theory can be described in terms of a flat subalgebra of the Kahler-Atiyah algebra of the compactification space, a description which has wide-ranging applications. As a motivating example, we consider the most general M-theory compactifications on eight-manifolds down to AdS(3) spaces which preserve N = 2 supersymmetry in 3 dimensions. We also give a brief sketch of the lift of such equations to the cone over the compactification space and of the geometric algebra approach to 'constrained generalized Killing pinors', which forms the technical and conceptual core of our investigation.