Abstract

We review the often forgotten fact that gravitation theories invariant under local de Sitter, anti-de Sitter or Poincaré transformations can be constructed in all odd dimensions. These theories belong to the Chern-Simons family and are particular cases of the so-called Lovelock gravities, constructed as the dimensional continuations of the lower dimensional Euler classes. The supersymmetric extensions of these theories exist for the AdS and Poincaré groups, and the fields are components of a single connection for the corresponding Lie algebras. In 11 dimensions these supersymmetric theories are gauge theories for the osp(132) and the M algebra, respectively. The relation between these new supergravities and the standard theories, as well as some of their dynamical features are also discussed. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd.