Alternative N=2 supergravity in singular five dimensions with matter/gauge couplings

We present an extended study of our previous work on an alternative five-dimensional N = 2 supergravity theory that has a single antisymmetric tensor and a dilaton as a part of supergravity multiplet. The new fields are natural Neveu-Schwarz massless fields in superstring theory. Our total matter multiplets include n copies of vector multiplets forming the sigma-model coset space SO(n,1)/SO(n), and n' copies of hypermultiplets forming the quaternionic Kahler manifold Sp(n',1)/Sp(n) x Sp(1). We complete the couplings of matter multiplets to supergravity with the gauged group of the type SO(2) x Sp(n') x Sp(1) x H x [U(1)](n-p+1) for an arbitrary gauge group H with p equivalent to dim H + 1, and the isotropy group Sp(n') x Sp(1) of the coset Sp(n',1)/Sp(n) x Sp(1) formed by the hypermultiplets. We also describe the generalization to singular 5D spacetime as in the conventional formulation. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.