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Off-shell supersymmetry and filtered Clifford supermodules

An off-shell representation of supersymmetry is a representation of the super Poincare algebra on a dynamically unconstrained space of fields. We describe such representations formally, in terms of the fields and their spacetime derivatives, and we interpret the physical concept of engineering dimension as an integral grading. We prove that formal graded off-shell representations of one-dimensional N-extended supersymmetry, i.e., the super Poincare algebra p^{1|N}, correspond to filtered Clifford supermodules over Cl(N). We also prove that formal graded off-shell representations of two-dimensional (p,q)-supersymmetry, i.e., the super Poincare algebra p^{1,1|p,q}, correspond to bifiltered Clifford supermodules over Cl(p+q). Our primary tools are the formal deformations of filtered superalgebras and supermodules, which give a one-to-one correspondence between filtered spaces and graded spaces with even degree-shifting injections. This generalizes the machinery developed by Gerstenhaber to prove that every filtered algebra is a deformation of its associated graded algebra. Our treatment extends Gerstenhaber's discussion to the case of filtrations which are compatible with a supersymmetric structure, as well as to filtered modules in addition to filtered algebras. We also describe the analogous constructions for bifiltrations and bigradings.