Consistent truncations and dualities

Abstract

Abstract Recent progress in generalised geometry and extended field theories suggests a deep connection between consistent truncations and dualities, which is not immediately obvious. A prime example is generalised Scherk-Schwarz reductions in double field theory, which have been shown to be in one-to-one correspondence with Poisson-Lie T-duality. Here we demonstrate that this relation is only the tip of the iceberg. Currently, the most general known classes of T-dualities (excluding mirror symmetry) are based on dressing cosets. But as we discuss, they can be further extended to the even larger class of generalised cosets. We prove that the latter give rise to consistent truncations for which the ansatz can be constructed systematically. Hence, we pave the way for many new examples of T-dualities and consistent truncations. The arising structures result in covariant tensors with more than two derivatives and we argue how they might be key to understand generalised T-dualities and consistent truncations beyond the leading two derivative level.