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Abstract

The analysis of the extremal structure of the scalar potentials of gauged maximally extended supergravity models in five, four, and three dimensions, and hence the determination of possible vacuum states of these models is a computationally challenging task due to the occurrence of the exceptional Lie groups $E_6$, $E_7$, $E_8$ in the definition of these potentials. At present, the most promising approach to gain information about nontrivial vacua of these models is to perform a truncation of the potential to submanifolds of the $G/H$ coset manifold of scalars which are invariant under a subgroup of the gauge group and of sufficiently low dimension to make an analytic treatment possible. New tools are presented which allow a systematic and highly effective study of these potentials up to a previously unreached level of complexity. Explicit forms of new truncations of the potentials of four- and three-dimensional models are given, and for N=16, D=3 supergravities, which are much more rich in structure than their higher-dimensional cousins, a series of new nontrivial vacua is identified and analysed