Twisting and localization in supergravity: equivariant cohomology of BPS black holes

Abstract

Abstract We develop the formalism of supersymmetric localization in supergravity using the deformed BRST algebra defined in the presence of a supersymmetric background as recently formulated in [1]. The gravitational functional integral localizes onto the cohomology of a global supercharge Q eq, obeying Q eq 2  = H, where H is a global symmetry of the background. Our construction naturally produces a twisted version of supergravity whenever supersymmetry can be realized off-shell. We present the details of the twisted graviton multiplet and ghost fields for the superconformal formulation of four-dimensional $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 2 supergravity. As an application of our formalism, we systematize the computation of the exact quantum entropy of supersymmetric black holes. In particular, we compute the one-loop determinant of the Q eq $$ \mathcal{V} $$ V deformation operator for the off-shell fluctuations of the Weyl multiplet around the AdS2 × S 2 saddle. This result, which is consistent with the corresponding large-charge on-shell analysis, is needed to complete the first-principles computation of the quantum entropy.