Hidden Supersymmetry of Domain Walls and Cosmologies

Abstract

We show that all domain-wall solutions of gravity coupled to scalar fields for which the world-volume geometry is Minkowski or anti–de Sitter admit Killing spinors, and satisfy corresponding first-order equations involving a superpotential determined by the solution. By analytic continuation, all flat or closed Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker cosmologies are shown to satisfy similar first-order equations arising from the existence of “pseudo Killing” spinors.